Archive for the 'PREGNANCY ISSUES' Category

When the cervix of a pregnant woman is weak, the chances of giving birth to a premature baby are raised by the shortening or premature opening of the cervix.

To prevent premature birth, the opening to the uterus is stitched or closed by means of a method called cervical cerclage, which ensures the developing baby stays inside the uterus until the gestational period of 37-38 weeks.

Causes of incompetent cervix:

• Cervical damage due to pregnancy termination;
• History of miscarriage during second trimester;
• Undergoing LEEP procedure or cone biopsy previously.

When to undergo cervical cerclage:

The best time to undergo this method is in the third month, i.e. between the gestational ages of 12 to 14 weeks. But, some pregnant women require cerclage in late pregnancy, a procedure called emergent cerclage. If you undergo emergent cerclage, your future pregnancies will also need a cervical cerclage.

Alternatives to cervical cerclage:

If cervical changes only surface during late pregnancy or if the cervix is already opened up, the best solution is complete bed rest.

Risk Factors:

Doctors recommend cervical cerclage if you have any of the following risks:

• Hormonal influences;
• Previous pre-term delivery;

Depression in pregnant women could help explain the growing problem of preterm delivery, scientists suggest.

While post-partum depression “has long been recognized as a serious public health problem,” Kaiser Permanente researchers write, “depression during pregnancy has not been well-studied.”

It’s not clear how common depression is in pregnant women and how it affects their babies, the authors write.

“Depression during pregnancy is really under-diagnosed, both by women and by obstetricians,” lead author De-Kun Li, a reproductive and perinatal epidemiologist at Kaiser Permanente’s Division of Research in Oakland, said in an interview.

Li and his co-authors screened women for depression about 10 weeks into their pregnancies. More than 40% reported having significant depressive symptoms, and half of those women reported having severe depressive symptoms.

A total of 791 women completed the screening and delivered a live baby. Women who, after being screened, went on to miscarry — defined as a pregnancy loss before 20 weeks’ gestation — were excluded from the analysis.

Read more at USA Today

Infants born more than one week past their due dates have a higher risk of both impaired health and death, according to two new studies by authors from the University of California’s San Francisco and Berkeley campuses.

The studies compared more than 2.5 million normal-weight births from healthy pregnancies of 37 to 42 weeks gestation, the range that is considered to be full-term.

The two studies focused on different elements of the risk of progressing beyond 41 weeks of gestation, but held similar conclusions.

The first study, which followed 1.8 million normal births in California from 1999 to 2003, reported greater odds of infant death among those born at 41 and 42 weeks.

The second study examined 2.5 million low-risk births nationwide in 2003, and reported that the risk of cesarean deliveries and poor health outcomes for both mother and child increased at 40 weeks and beyond.

“Significant research has focused on the risks of premature deliveries, but until now, there have been no large-scale studies documenting the increased risk of delivering at 40 weeks or more,” said Aaron Caughey, MD, MPH, PhD, an associate professor of obstetrics.

Twin to twin transfusion syndrome or TTTS is a very serious condition that appears in identical twins and some high order multiples that share the placenta.

Usually, this condition arises due to the link in between the blood vessels of two babies in their shared placenta.

Due to TTTS, one baby receives too much blood and the other too little. Also, this syndrome is called as chronic inter-twin transfusion syndrome.

This condition occurs in 15% of the cases with identical twins. But, fraternal twins are not at the risk of this condition as they do not have shared placenta.

Twin to twin transfusion syndrome can not be avoided by doing or not doing a specific thing. This is neither a genetic condition nor a hereditary condition.

Diagnosing twin to twin transfusion syndrome:

There is a possibility of this condition if any of the below conditions can be observed in pregnancy ultrasound. They include:

• Significant difference in fetus sizes of the same sex
• The sizes of the 2 amniotic sacs will greatly differ.
• Significant variation in the umbilical cord sizes
• Single shared placenta
• Determining congestive heart malfunction in a recipient twin

Smoking during pregnancy appears to affect children’s birth weight, and possibly their risk of becoming overweight, but it may not directly harm other aspects of physical and cognitive development, a large study suggests.

The findings, from a study of nearly 53,000 U.S. children born in the 1960s, found that those whose mothers smoked during pregnancy were at higher risk of low birth weight — a link that studies have long noted.

There was also evidence, albeit weaker, that these children were more likely than children of non-smoking women to be overweight by age 7.

Some past studies have found this link as well, though researchers can only speculate on the reasons; one theory is that nicotine may affect the fetal brain in a way that influences appetite control later in life.

On the other hand, the current study also found that mothers’ smoking did not appear to directly affect other aspects of their children’s development — including intelligence, school performance and the risk of behavioral problems.

An initial look at the data did show associations between smoking during pregnancy and various developmental problems.

Pregnant women who take high levels of daily calcium supplements show a marked reduction in lead levels in their blood, suggesting calcium could play a critical role in reducing fetal and infant exposure.

A new study at the University of Michigan shows that women who take 1,200 milligrams of calcium daily have up to a 31 percent reduction in lead levels.

Women who used lead-glazed ceramics and those with high bone lead levels showed the largest reductions; the average reduction was about 11 percent, said Howard Hu, chair of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the School of Public Health.

“We and others have previously shown that during pregnancy, mothers can transfer lead from their bones to their unborn — with significant adverse consequences–making maternal bone lead stores a threat even if current environmental lead exposures are low,” Hu said.

“This study demonstrates that dietary calcium supplementation during pregnancy may constitute a low-cost and low-risk approach for reducing this threat.”

Lead exposure is a great concern for pregnant and lactating women, especially in developing countries where lead exposures have been high until recently, and for women with occupational exposure.

Women who go through a traumatic event during or soon before pregnancy may be at increased risk of having an underweight baby, a large study suggests.

Researchers found that of more than 1 million Danish women who gave birth over 24 years, those who dealt with the death or serious illness of a loved one shortly before or during pregnancy were more likely to have a low-birth weight baby.

The findings, reported in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, do not prove that severe stress during pregnancy harms fetal growth. However, it is possible that this is the case, according to lead researcher Ali S. Khashan, of the University of Manchester in the UK.

Research indicates that high levels of stress hormones in the mother can hinder fetal growth, and severe stress may make it difficult for some pregnant women to follow a healthy lifestyle.

Still, Khashan told Reuters Health, the current findings are “subtle,” linking severe stress to a relatively small effect on birthweight. “So the overall risk to an individual experiencing ‘normal’ stress is tiny,” the researcher explained.

On the other hand, Khashan said, the study does give “valuable insights” into the importance of the uterine environment in fetal development and, ultimately, babies’ well-being.

Undiagnosed infections may be causing a significant number of premature births, researchers reported on Monday after finding bacteria or fungi in 15 percent of the amniotic fluid samples taken from women in pre-term labor.

The heavier the infection, the more likely the women were to deliver younger, sicker infants, the team at Stanford University in California found.

“If we could prevent these infections in the first place, or detect them sooner, we might one day be able to prevent some of these premature births,” Dr. Dan DiGiulio, who worked on the study, said in a statement.

More and more children are being born prematurely in the United States, with 12 percent of births coming before the 37th week of gestation. Premature babies are vulnerable to breathing problems, underdeveloped organs, infections and cerebral palsy.

DiGiulio’s team looked for the DNA of germs in amniotic fluid samples collected from 166 women in pre-term labor at the Detroit Medical Center between October 1998 and December 2002.

They used this method and standard laboratory cultures to determine that 25 of the 166 samples were infected with either bacteria or fungi. They also found at least one unknown organism that could be a new species.

Alcohol use during the teen years can not only lead to subsequent alcohol problems, it can also lead to risky sexual behavior and a greater risk of early childbearing.

An examination of the relationship between a lifetime history of alcohol dependence (AD) and timing of first childbirth across reproductive development has found that AD in women is associated with delayed reproduction.

“Reproductive dysfunctions include a range of menstrual disorders, sexual dysfunctions, and pregnancy complications that include spontaneous abortion or miscarriage,” explained Mary Waldron, assistant professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine and corresponding author for the study.

“Teenagers who drink tend to have disruptions in their menstrual cycle as well as unplanned pregnancies.”

These complications may become more pronounced with time, added Sharon C. Wilsnack, Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor in the department of clinical neuroscience at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine & Health Sciences.

“Higher rates of reproductive dysfunction in adult women may reflect the cumulative effects of longer exposure to alcohol for older women than for female adolescents,” she said.

“To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine alcohol’s effects on reproductive onset across reproductive development,” said Waldron. “Most previous research has examined risks to teens or adults but not both.

In a study on fetal alcohol syndrome, researchers were able to prevent the damage that alcohol causes to cells in a key area of the fetal brain by blocking acid sensitive potassium channels and preventing the acidic environment that alcohol produces.

The cerebellum, the portion of the brain that is responsible for balance and muscle coordination, is particularly vulnerable to injury from alcohol during development.

The researchers also found that although alcohol lowers the amount of oxygen in the blood of the mother, it is not the lack of oxygen that damages the fetal cerebellum, but the drop in pH.

Fetal alcohol syndrome is a condition in which maternal drinking during pregnancy injures the brain of the developing fetus.

Alcohol is the most common cause of injury to the fetal brain. Children born with fetal alcohol syndrome may have cognitive impairments and difficulty regulating their behavior.

They often have difficulty in school and exhibit behavioral problems, such as impulsiveness, later in life.

The syndrome is estimated to occur in approximately one in every 1,000 births in Western countries. Milder forms of the condition, known as fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, occur more frequently.