Objective: To assess whether changes in platelet indices, detectable by simple complete blood count (CBC), during pregnancy could be used as markers for prediction of development of preeclampsia (PE). Methods: A total of 2813 pregnant women who received regular antenatal care until delivery were included. Participants were divided into 3 groups: normotensive pregnant women (n = 2621), women wit...

Over a 25-month period 8118 blood samples were assayed for the presence of the serum pregnancy specific-protein B (PSPB) and progesterone (P4) concentrations on three Hungarian large-scale dairy farms. Pregnancy (n = 4085) was checked by BioPRYN assay at 30-36 days post-insemination (PI). Samples from all cows that tested not pregnant and from cows with an optical density (OD) reading in the Bi...

Among the several risk factors of preeclampsia (PE), blood pressure (BP) elevation could be one of the earliest and most reliable signs of the disease. Various BP parameters, such as mean arterial pressure, ambulatory BP, and home BP, could be useful for the prediction of PE in pregnant women. When a pregnant woman before 20th gestational week has high BP, three possibilities can be considered:...

In this report we review modern nonlinearity methods that can be used in the preterm birth analysis. The nonlinear analysis of uterine contraction signals can provide information regarding physiological changes during the menstrual cycle and pregnancy. This information can be used both for the preterm birth prediction and the preterm labor control.

OBJECTIVE To determine if combinations of maternal characteristics and measurements of parameters used in screening for aneuploidies at 11-13 weeks provide significant prediction of macrosomia. METHOD Maternal characteristics, fetal nuchal translucency (NT), free β-human chorionic gonadotrophin (β-hCG) and pregnancy-associated plasma protein-A (PAPP-A) were recorded at 11(+0)-13(+6) weeks in ...

Sonographic prediction of macrosomia cannot be improved by combination with pregnancy-specific characteristics Balsyte D, Balsyte D, Schäffer L, Burkhardt T, Wisser J, Kurmanavicius J. Ultrasound Obstet Gynecol 2009; 33: 453–8. We all know how inaccurate fetal weight estimation at ultrasound examination can be. So a search for help in increasing prediction accuracy is reasonable. This study, ho...

In The Netherlands, neonatal euthanasia has become a legal option and the Groningen Protocol contains an approach to identify situations in which neonatal euthanasia might be appropriate. In the 5 years following the publication of the protocol, neither the prediction that this would be the first step on a slippery slope, nor the prediction of complete transparency and legal control became true...

Understanding pathophysiology and identifying mothers at risk of major pregnancy complications is vital to effective prevention and optimal management. However, in current antenatal care, understanding of pathophysiology of complications is limited. In gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), risk prediction is mostly based on maternal history and clinical risk factors and may not optimally identif...

Aggressive behaviour is linked to fitness, but it is metabolically costly. Changes in metabolic demand during the reproductive cycle could constrain activity and thereby modulate behavioural phenotypes. We predicted that increased metabolic demands in late pregnancy would lead to reduced aggression and a lower metabolic cost of behaviour in the mosquitofish Gambusia holbrooki. Contrary to our p...

Early prediction of premature pregnancy reduces neonatal death and helps in adoption of treatment well suited for the pre-term pregnancy state. There are scads of work done in the area of term and pre-term pregnancy analysis like artificial intelligence, regressive models, and higher order statistical models. This paper proposes a four-level decomposition of Electrohysterography (EHG) signals u...