Pregnant mothers often report a special awareness of and bonding with their unborn child. Little is known about this relationship although it may offer potential for the assessment of the fetal condition. Recently we found evidence of short epochs of fetal-maternal heart rate synchronization under uncontrolled conditions with spontaneous maternal breathing. Here, we examine whether the occurren...

Background: Current prenatal diagnosis requires invasive testing which carries a 1-4% procedure-related-risk of miscarriage; hence, non-invasive techniques are desired. The recent demonstration of cell-free-fetal-DNA enriched from maternal plasma has opened new possibilities for non-invasive-prenatal-diagnosis of not only genetic-disorders such as β-thalassaemia and haemophilia but also chromos...

Both intact fetal cells as well as cell-free fetal DNA are present in the maternal circulation and can be recovered for non-invasive prenatal genetic diagnosis. Although methods for enrichment and isolation of rare intact fetal cells have been challenging, diagnosis of fetal chromosomal aneuploidy including trisomy 21 in first- and second-trimester pregnancies has been achieved with a 50-75% de...

Isolation of fetal cells from maternal blood is under active investigation as a noninvasive method of prenatal diagnosis. In the context of studying cell surface antigens expressed on fetal cells we discovered that fetal cells from a prior pregnancy also could be detected. This led to the appreciation of the persistence of fetal cells in maternal blood for as long as 27 years postpartum, and th...

the first step in the prenatal diagnosis of x-linked genetic disorders is determining fetus gender. current invasive methods to obtain the dna source of the fetus instead of its miscarriage risk, has harmful stress for high risk pregnancies. cell free fetal dna (cffdna) circulating in the maternal blood, has now become a useful source of noninvasive prenatal diagnosis. considering limitation of...

Humans have the greatest fat content of any mammalian species at birth (1). It has been known for many years that abnormally high maternal glucose (as is the case when the mother has type 1 or type 2 diabetes during pregnancy) is characteristically associated with increased fat deposition in utero. In pioneering work in the 1950s, Pedersen (2) suggested that in the offspring of mothers with dia...

The fetus obtains a significant amount of cholesterol from de novo synthesis. Studies have suggested that maternal cholesterol may also contribute to the cholesterol accrued in the fetus. Thus, the present studies were completed to determine whether diet-induced maternal hypercholesterolemia would affect fetal sterol metabolism. To accomplish this, maternal plasma cholesterol concentrations wer...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to investigate the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of sotalol in the treatment of fetal tachycardia. BACKGROUND Maternally administered, intrauterine therapy of fetal tachycardia is dependent on the transplacental passage of the antiarrhythmic agent. METHODS In a prospective study of patients treated for fetal tachycardia with sotalol, concentratio...