BACKGROUND AND AIM Maternal infections during pregnancy have been associated with several neurological disorders in the offspring. However, given the lack of specificity for both the exposures and the outcomes, other factors related to infection such as impaired maternal immune function may be involved in the causal pathway. If impaired maternal immune function plays a role, we would expect inf...

Maternal infection during pregnancy increases the risk of schizophrenia and other brain disorders of neurodevelopmental origin in the offspring. A multitude of infectious agents seem to be involved in this association. Therefore, it has been proposed that factors common to the immune response to a wide variety of bacterial and viral pathogens may be the critical link between prenatal infection ...

Varicella (chickenpox) in pregnancy is unusual because most women of childbearing age are immune. It can, however, cause significant morbidity for the pregnant woman and in rare cases cause congenital varicella syndrome. The incidence of congenital varicella syndrome after maternal varicella during the first two trimesters is <1% across multiple cohort studies. Maternal infection in the third t...

Neonatal immune development begins in pregnancy and continues into lactation and may be affected by maternal diet. We investigated the possibility that maternal protein deficiency (PD) during a chronic gastrointestinal (GI) nematode infection could impair neonatal immune development. Beginning on d 14 of pregnancy, mice were fed protein-sufficient (PS; 24%) or protein-deficient (PD; 6%) isoener...

Abstract Aim The AGG (Working Group for Obstetrics and Prenatal Diagnostics, Section Maternal Diseases) has issued these recommendations to improve the detection management of Toxoplasma gondii infection in pregnancy. Methods Members Task Force developed statements presented here using recently published literature. were adopted after a consensus process by members working group. Recommendation...

BACKGROUND Cryptosporidium epidemiology is poorly understood, but infection is suspected of contributing to childhood malnutrition and diarrhea-related mortality worldwide. METHODS/FINDINGS A prospective cohort of 108 women and their infants in rural/semi-rural Tanzania were followed from delivery through six months. Cryptosporidium infection was determined in feces using modified Ziehl-Neels...

Human papillomavirus (HPV) infection of the genital tract is associated with the development of genital warts. A causal link between maternal HPV infection and development of laryngeal papillomatosis in the offspring has been proposed. We report a case of pulmonary cystic disease, a rare but serious complication of laryngeal papillomatosis in a child, following maternal genital warts.

For the 2007–2008 season, the Canadian National Advisory Committee on Immunization has for the first time recommended that all pregnant women be vaccinated against influenza. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have recommended influenza vaccination for pregnant women in the second and third trimester of pregnancy since 1997; in 2004, this recommendation was rev...

Objective: To investigate whether there was difference in levels of procalcitonin (PCT) and C-reactive protein (CRP) in intrauterine infection and non-intrauterine infection and to study the potential of PCT and CRP as for diagnostic markers of intrauterine infection. Methods: 200 cases were selected, including 98 cases of intrauterine infection and 102 cases of nonintrauterine infection during...