OBJECTIVE To determine if maternal country of birth is associated with the risk of antepartum stillbirth in late pregnancy. DESIGN, SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS Retrospective cross-sectional study of all singleton births at 37-42 weeks' gestation, excluding those with congenital abnormalities and intrapartum stillbirths, between 1 June 2001 and 31 May 2011 at Southern Health, a large metropolitan...

Physiologically, anemia often occurs during pregnancy because of an increase in circulating plasma volume. Pregnancy anemia is found prenatally in 50-75% of women. Based on the present survey performed in our obstetrics and gynecology ward, 52% of women experienced anemia during their pregnancy. This suggests that normal physiological changes due to pregnancy alone are not the only factors cont...

Eclampsia is considered a form of hypertensive encephalopathy in which an acute elevation in blood pressure causes autoregulatory breakthrough, blood-brain barrier disruption, and edema formation. We hypothesized that pregnancy predisposes the brain to eclampsia by lowering the pressure of autoregulatory breakthrough and enhancing cerebral edema formation. Because NO production is increased in ...

BACKGROUND To evaluate the association between prepregnancy body mass index (BMI) is associated with early vs. late and medically-induced vs. spontaneous preterm birth (PTB) subtypes. METHODS Using data from the Boston Birth Cohort, we examined associations of prepregnancy BMI with 189 early (<34 completed weeks) and 277 late (34-36 completed weeks) medically-induced PTBs and 320 early and 61...

Certain similarities between preeclampsia and insulin resistance syndrome suggest a possible link between the 2 diseases. The aim of our study was to evaluate 3 insulin sensitivity (IS) indexes (fasting homeostasis model assessment IS [ISHOMA], quantitative insulin sensitivity check index [ISQUICKI], and oral glucose IS [OGIS]) early and late in pregnancy in a large number of normotensive pregn...

OBJECTIVE To examine the risk for persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn associated with antenatal exposure to antidepressants. DESIGN Systematic review and meta-analysis. DATA SOURCES Embase, Medline, PsycINFO, and CINAHL from inception to 30 December 2012. ELIGIBILITY English language studies reporting persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn associated with exposure t...