We evaluated the possible role of increased adenosine in the regulation of uteroplacental circulation during nonpreeclamptic twin gestations. We performed uterine artery Doppler velocimetry and maternal arterial blood sampling for measurement of plasma adenosine levels in 16 women with singleton gestation and 14 women with dichorionic twin gestation without preeclampsia at 11-12, 25-26 and 34-3...

The maternal plasma levels of bupivacaine following epidural administration of 0.5 per cent solution with 1/200,000 adrenaline were determined in twelve patients in labour. After 10 ml (50 mg) peak concentrations occurred 15-30 min later and ranged from 0.22 ^ug/ml to 0.60 ,«g/ml. Plasma levels fell gradually with time after the peak until by 3 hours after injection they were all well below 0.2...

Maternal stress or anxiety during pregnancy can lead to neurodevelopmental and other problems in the child, and cortisol is one possible mediator. Animal models show that maternal prenatal stress can affect placental function, including regulation of placental 11beta-HSD2, the main barrier to the placental passage of cortisol. It is not known whether a parallel process exists in humans. The aim...

BACKGROUND The importance of maternal dietary choline for fetal neural development and later cognitive function has been well-documented in experimental studies. Although choline is an essential dietary nutrient for humans, evidence that low maternal choline in pregnancy impacts neurodevelopment in human infants is lacking. We determined potential associations between maternal plasma free choli...

Under normal physiological conditions, essential amino acids (EA) are transported from mother to fetus at different rates. The mechanisms underlying these differences include the expression of several amino acid transport systems in the placenta and the regulation of EA concentrations in maternal and fetal plasma. To study the relation of EA transplacental flux to maternal plasma concentration,...

A current hypothesis of ovine parturition proposes that fetal adrenal cortisol induces placental E2 production, which, in turn, triggers intrauterine PG production. However, recent evidence suggests that cortisol may directly increase PG production in trophoblast-derived tissues. To separate cortisol-dependent and estrogen-dependent PG production in sheep intrauterine tissues, we infused single...

485–7. 3. Lo YMD, Tein MS, Lau TK, Haines CJ, Leung TN, Poon PM, et al. Quantitative analysis of fetal DNA in maternal plasma and serum: implications for noninvasive prenatal diagnosis. Am J Hum Genet 1998;62:768–75. 4. Zhong XY, Laivuori H, Livingston JC, Ylikorkala O, Sibai BM, Holzgreve W, et al. Elevation of both maternal and fetal extracellular circulating deoxyribonucleic acid concentrati...

BACKGROUND The discovery of fetal DNA in maternal plasma has opened up an approach for noninvasive prenatal diagnosis. Despite the rapid expansion in clinical applications, the molecular characteristics of plasma DNA in pregnant women remain unclear. METHODS We investigated the size distribution of plasma DNA in 34 nonpregnant women and 31 pregnant women, using a panel of quantitative PCR ass...

introduction: many of the diseases of adulthood are originated from the intrauterine conditions during fetal life. because of the importance of thyroid hormones in growth and development of the fetus, the effects of maternal hypothyroidism on carbohydrate metabolism in adulthood was investigated. methods: pregnant rats were divided into the fetal hypothyroidism (fh) and the control (c) groups. ...

T he discovery of fetal DNA in the plasma of pregnant women has led to the development of promising approaches for non-invasive prenatal diagnosis. However, as fetal and maternal DNA species co-exist in maternal plasma, these DNA based diagnostic applications depend largely on the use of genetic markers that would allow the discrimination between fetal and maternal DNA (for example, the Y chrom...