BACKGROUND Threatened preterm labor is a leading cause of hospital admission during pregnancy. Patients with an episode of threatened preterm labor who deliver at term are considered to have false preterm labor. However, threatened preterm labor has been proposed as a pathologic insult that is not always sufficient to induce irreversible spontaneous preterm birth but that could alter the normal...

OBJECTIVE The complement system plays a central role in the first line of defense against invading pathogens, and its activation involves the release of potent pro-inflammatory mediators such as anaphylatoxins C3a, C4a and C5a. The aim of this study was to determine whether differences existed in maternal plasma anaphylatoxin concentrations between patients with term and preterm parturition. ...

Prenatal care refers to accurate and consistent performance of the principles important to maintain healthy pregnancy outcomes and also for mother and child health. One of the new indices to assess the adequacy of care is Revised Graduated Index of Prenatal Care Utilization (R-GINDEX).The study aims to assess the relationship between quantitative prenatal care factors and preterm labor and low ...

BACKGROUND Infection and inflammation are important mechanisms leading to preterm birth. Soluble triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells-1 (sTREM-1) belongs to a family of cell surface receptors that seems to play an important role in fine-tuning the immune response. It has been demonstrated that sTREM-1 is involved in bacterial infection as well as in non-infectious inflammatory conditi...

aim of this study is to determine the risk of adverse pregnancy outcome by maternal serum alpha-fetoprotein (msafp) level. we followed 295 pregnant women from msafp screening in the 14th to 22th week of gestation until the end of pregnancy and information on pregnancy outcome have been recorded in questionnaires. of 295 pregnant women, 270 had term labor and 25 had preterm labor. the frequencie...

preterm birth means the birth before thirty seven week of pregnancy that causes a lot of complications for the baby. variety factors are suggested to be involved in disease. in this study, we decided to evaluate haptoglobin (hp) phenotypes association with clinical features of patients suffered from premature delivery to understand better the possible correlation of genetic and clinical feature...

BACKGROUND Localized inflammation and increased expression of TLR4 receptors within the uterus has been implicated in the pathogenesis of preterm labor. It remains unclear whether intrauterine inflammatory responses activate the maternal peripheral circulatory system. Therefore we determined whether increased TLR4 expression is present in the peripheral maternal white blood cells of women with ...