Guarding against premature birth
Roush, W.
Science 271(5246): 139-140
1996
ISSN/ISBN: 0036-8075 PMID: 8539610 Document Number: 460559
Recent medical studies have pointed toward a means of reducing the incidence of premature birth. Each week of pregnancy improves a fetus's chance of survival outside the womb. In a recent New England Journal of Medicine, Hillier et al. and Hauth et al. report, respectively, that subjects diagnosed with bacterial vaginosis (BV) are 40 percent more likely to give birth prematurely and that antibiotic treatment of pregnant women with BV can decrease the rate of premature delivery by over one-third. In Obstetrics and Gynecology, however, Kundsin et al. report that one of the most common agents infecting the uterus, Ureaplasma, far outweighs BV as a cause of premature delivery and that it is difficult to eliminate during pregnancy and may need large-scale screening and treatment prior to conception.