Swallowing represents a primary physiological function that provides for the ingestion of food and fluid. In precocial species, swallowing activity likely develops in utero to provide for a functional system during the neonatal period. The chronically instrumented ovine fetal preparation has provided the opportunity for recent advances in understanding the regulation of in utero swallowing acti...

We hypothesized that central neuropeptide Y (NPY) increases swallowing activity and alters renal function in the near-term ovine fetus. Six ewes with singleton fetuses (130 +/- 2 days of gestation; 148 days = term) were chronically prepared with arterial and venous catheters, a fetal lateral cerebroventricular cannula, and fetal bladder and amniotic fluid catheters. For determination of fetal s...

Phosphofructokinase isozymes of fetal, neonatal, and adult rat heart and skeletal muscle were characterized by DEAE-cellulose chromatography, agarose gel electrophoresis, and immunodiffusion with specific antisera. The results of these studies indicate that in skeletal muscle and heart the levels of the major liver phosphofructokinase isozyme (PFK-L2) and the muscle phosphofructokinase isozyme ...

We have investigated the factors that regulate aromatase activity in fetal-neonatal rat ovaries. Ovarian aromatase activity (assessed by measuring the amount of 3H2O) formed from [1 beta-3H]testosterone) is low prior to birth (less than 0.5 pmol/hr per mg of protein) and increases to values greater than 30 pmol/hr per mg of protein between days 8 and 12 after birth. The appearance of ovarian ar...

introduction: the process of wound healing sets in motion a complex and dynamic series of events, which includes the remodeling of the extracellular matrix degradation of matrix proteins, predominantly collagen fibers, mediated by matrix metalloproteinase (mmps). our aim was to demonstrate whether fibroblasts derived from various strains of human fetal foreskin (fs) and adult skin (as), when cu...

BACKGROUND Reduced production of the vasodilator nitric oxide (NO) in fetal vessels in pregnant smokers may lower the blood flow to the fetus and result in lower birth weight, length, and head circumference. The present study measured endothelial NO synthase (eNOS) activity in fetal umbilical and chorionic vessels from nonsmokers, smokers, and ex-smokers and related the findings to the fetal ou...