1. To increase awareness of the ethical issues associated with multifetal pregnancy reduction; 2. To highlight the potential ethical distinctions between singleton abortion and multifetal pregnancy reduction; 3. To explore whether different types of fetal reduction procedures present distinct ethical issues that require unique ethical justification, drawing attention to the utility of ethical a...

The study is a critical analysis of the decisions to induce labour or schedule cesareans in the practice of a third level referral centre, with as outcome criterion the reduction of fetal death. 783 women pregnant with twins were included from 1.1.1993 to 31.12.1998, in three groups: originally booked, referred for care during pregnancy, or transferred from another institution. The results show...

Healthy pregnancy depends on proper placentation-including proliferation, differentiation, and invasion of trophoblast cells-which, if impaired, causes placental ischemia resulting in intrauterine growth restriction and preeclampsia. Mechanisms regulating trophoblast invasion, however, are unknown. We report that reduction of Inverted formin 2 (INF2) alters intracellular trafficking and signifi...

Currents were elicited by acetylcholine (ACh), by d-tubocurarine (dTC), and by mixtures of ACh and dTC, from stably transformed fibroblasts that express fetal or adult muscle nicotinic receptors. dTC acted as an antagonist of ACh for activation of adult-type receptors, whereas it acted as a weak partial agonist at fetal-type receptors. The channel-blocking action of dTC was not apparent at the ...

Correspondence: Dr. C.A. Ionescu e-mail: antoniuginec@ yahoo.com After numerous clinical validation studies, non-invasive prenatal testing for fetal aneuploidy detection is now a clinical reality. While non-invasive prenatal testing was accepted due to the high accuracy for fetal trisomy (21, 18 and 13) detection, recent research showed that genome-wide analysis is able to detect other fetal an...

Iron deficiency anemia (IDA) is the most common hematologic abnormality, which a reduction in concentration of erythrocytes or hemoglobin blood pregnancy because requirements increase during pregnancy. Since failure to maintain sufficient levels iron may result adverse maternal-fetal consequences, active counseling and support from medical staff are necessary. Regarding points note treatment, t...

Ethanol is now considered the most common human teratogen. Educational campaigns have not reduced the incidence of ethanol-mediated teratogenesis, leading to a growing interest in the development of therapeutic prevention or mitigation strategies. On the basis of the observation that maternal ethanol consumption reduces maternal and fetal pH, we hypothesized that a pH-sensitive pathway involvin...

Spontaneous contractions of the fetal airways are a well recognized but poorly characterized phenomenon. In the present study spontaneous narrowing of the airways was analyzed in freshly isolated lungs from early to late gestation in fetal pigs and rabbits and in cultured fetal mouse lungs. Propagating waves of contraction traveling proximal to distal were observed in fresh lungs throughout ges...

To better understand substance use disorder treatment needs of pregnant and parenting women who use methamphetamine (MA), this paper describes pregnancy histories and fetal losses for women who were treated for MA use (N = 153) with reference to a national sample, and describes their drug use, sexual risk behaviors, and mental health status. MA users reported an average of 4.6 total pregnancies...