fetal development

BACKGROUND: Some maternal characteristics are related to alcohol intake during pregnancy, which irreversibly compromises the maternal-fetal binomial integrity. OBJECTIVES: To identify the frequency, impact, and factors associated with alcohol consumption during pregnancy. DESIGN AND SETTING: A cross-sectional study was performed at the Hospital Materno Infantil Presidente Vargas (HMIPV) in Porto Alegre/RS between March and December 2016. METHODS: A structured questionnaire was administered along with a medical records review...

BACKGROUND: MRI-based placental analyses have been used to improve fetal growth restriction (FGR) assessment by complementing ultrasound-based measurements. However, these are still limited by time-consuming manual annotation in MRI data and the lack of mother-based information. PURPOSE: To develop and validate a hybrid model for accurate FGR assessment by automatic placental radiomics on T2-weighted imaging (T2WI) and multifeature fusion. STUDY TYPE: Retrospective...

Despite the global improvements in neonatal outcomes, mortality and morbidity rates among preterm infants are still unacceptably high. Therefore, it is crucial to thoroughly analyze the factors that affect these outcomes, including sex, race, and social determinants of health. By comprehending the influence of these factors, we can work towards reducing their impact and enhancing the quality of neonatal care. This review will summarize the available evidence on sex differences, racial differences, and social determinants of health related to neonates...

Iris mammillations are distinctive uniform nipple-like elevations that cover the anterior surface of the iris partially or totally. It is a rare finding and may coexist with other ocular and extraocular manifestations. Optic nerve pit (ONP), also known as optic disc pit (ODP) or optic hole, is a congenital defect resulting from the failure of fetal fissure closure during the embryonic development. It belongs to the congenital cavitary anomalies spectrum. This case presents a 19-year-old female patient who complained of a gradual decrease in visual acuity in both eyes for 4 years...

BACKGROUND: The production of bovine theileriosis vaccine involves in vitro cultivation of Theileria annulata schizont-infected cell lines. Fetal bovine serum (FBS) is commonly used in animal cell culture, including the Theileria cell line. However, we aimed to reduce the amount of serum needed for cell culture by modifying the Stoker culture medium with supplements such as excretion factor and serum substitutes. METHODS: To evaluate the effectiveness of these modifications, techniques such as cell counting, cell viability assays, and genomic analysis were employed in the Parasitic Vaccines Production Department of Razi institute of Iran, from 2020 to 2022...

INTRODUCTION: Preterm identification of cervical dilation in pregnant women leads to the application of emergency cervical cerclage with an expectation of achieving term delivery. However, this is not always feasible. Short- and long-term neonatal complications post-preterm birth pose a significant challenge. It is crucial to anticipate potential complications and understand the possibilities of postpartum development as they can be encountered. We aimed to evaluate the effect of the degree of cervical dilatation before ultrasound and physical examination-indicated cerclage in singleton pregnancies presenting with premature cervical dilatation with bulging fetal membranes (rescue cerclage) on subsequent neonatal outcomes...

Pathogenic mutant huntingtin (mHTT) infiltrates the adult Huntington's disease (HD) brain and impairs fetal corticogenesis. However, most HD animal models rarely recapitulate neuroanatomical alterations in adult HD and developing brains. Thus, the human cortical organoid (hCO) is an alternative approach to decode mHTT pathogenesis precisely during human corticogenesis. Here, we replicated the altered corticogenesis in the HD fetal brain using HD patient-derived hCOs. Our HD-hCOs had pathological phenotypes, including deficient junctional complexes in the neural tubes, delayed postmitotic neuronal maturation, dysregulated fate specification of cortical neuron subtypes, and abnormalities in early HD subcortical projections during corticogenesis, revealing a causal link between impaired progenitor cells and chaotic cortical neuronal layering in the HD brain...

Congenital tumors are rare, and malignant congenital tumors are uncommon. Benign tu,mors might be life-threatening, depending on the location and size of the tumor. Different factors affect congenital tumors, such as maternal and placental hormones and environmental factors such as drugs, radiation, and infection. Developing fetal imaging methods and continuous follow-up during pregnancy are important factors in congenital tumor prognosis. Ultrasound is the most common method used for fetal evaluation. The complementary evaluation method is MRI...

Childhood obesity with its growing prevalence worldwide presents one of the most important health challenges nowadays. Multiple mechanisms are involved in the development of this condition, as well as in its associations with various cardiometabolic complications, such as insulin resistance, diabetes, metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease and cardiovascular diseases. Recent findings suggest that childhood obesity and associated dyslipidemia at least partly originate from epigenetic modifications that take place in the earliest periods of life, namely prenatal and perinatal periods...

INTRODUCTION: Prenatal alcohol exposure causes a variety of impairments to the fetus called Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD). Since it is very difficult to identify women that consume alcohol during pregnancy, different methods have been studied to evaluate alcohol exposure. Ethyl Glucuronide (EtG) and Fatty Acid Ethyl Esters (FAEEs) are commonly used to measure alcohol consumption in individuals at-risk for alcohol abuse, including pregnant women. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We conducted a study of two cohorts of 1...

BACKGROUND: Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) is a consequence of prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) associated with a range of effects, including dysmorphic features, prenatal and/or postnatal growth problems, and neurodevelopmental difficulties. Despite advances in treatment methods, there are still gaps in knowledge that highlight the need for further research. The study investigates the effect of PAE on the autonomic system, including sex differences that may aid in early FASD diagnosis, which is essential for effective interventions...

Sheep are typically considered as industrial animals that provide wool and meals. However, they play a significant role in medical research in addition to their conventional use. Notably, sheep fetuses are resistant to surgical invasions and can endure numerous manipulations, such as needle puncture and cell transplantation, and surgical operations requiring exposure beyond the uterus. Based on these distinguishing characteristics, we established a chimeric sheep model capable of producing human/monkey pluripotent cell-derived blood cells via the fetal liver...

PURPOSE: Widening the availability of fetal MRI with fully automatic real-time planning of radiological brain planes on 0.55T MRI. METHODS: Deep learning-based detection of key brain landmarks on a whole-uterus echo planar imaging scan enables the subsequent fully automatic planning of the radiological single-shot Turbo Spin Echo acquisitions. The landmark detection pipeline was trained on over 120 datasets from varying field strength, echo times, and resolutions and quantitatively evaluated...

Human brain organization involves the coordinated expression of thousands of genes. For example, the first principal component (C1) of cortical transcription identifies a hierarchy from sensorimotor to association regions. In this study, optimized processing of the Allen Human Brain Atlas revealed two new components of cortical gene expression architecture, C2 and C3, which are distinctively enriched for neuronal, metabolic and immune processes, specific cell types and cytoarchitectonics, and genetic variants associated with intelligence...

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Accurate recognition of fetal anatomical structure is a pivotal task in ultrasound (US) image analysis. Sonographers naturally apply anatomical knowledge and clinical expertise to recognizing key anatomical structures in complex US images. However, mainstream object detection approaches usually treat each structure recognition separately, overlooking anatomical correlations between different structures in fetal US planes. In this work, we propose a Fetal Anatomy Reasoning Network (FARN) that incorporates two kinds of relationship forms: a global context semantic block summarized with visual similarity and a local topology relationship block depicting structural pair constraints...

PURPOSE: To undertake the first ultrastructural characterization of human retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) differentiation from fetal development to adolescence. METHODS: Ten fetal eyes and three eyes aged six, nine, and 17 years were examined in the temporal retina adjacent to the optic nerve head by transmission electron microscopy. The area, number, and distribution of RPE organelles were quantified and interpreted within the context of adjacent photoreceptors, Bruch's membrane, and choriocapillaris maturation...

PURPOSE: There is limited research on the effects of maternal hyperandrogenism (MHA) on cardiometabolic risk factors in male offspring. We aimed to compare the risk of metabolic syndrome (MetS) in sons of women with preconceptional hyperandrogenism (HA) to those of non-HA women in later life. METHODS: Using data obtained from the Tehran Lipid and Glucose Cohort Study, with an average of 20 years follow-up, 1913 sons were divided into two groups based on their MHA status, sons with MHA (n = 523) and sons without MHA (controls n = 1390)...

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of high mobility group protein B1 (HMGB1) in placental development and fetal growth. METHODS: We employed the Cre-loxP recombination system to establish a placenta-specific HMGB1 knockout mouse model. Breeding HMGB1flox/flox mice with Elf5-Cre mice facilitated the knockout, leveraging Elf5 expression in extra-embryonic ectoderm, ectoplacental cone, and trophoblast giant cells at 12.5 days of embryonic development...

The developmental origins of health and disease concept highlights the impact of early environments on chronic non-communicable diseases like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Studies using animal models have investigated how maternal factors such as undernutrition, overnutrition, obesity, and exposure to chemicals or hypoxia affect fetal development and offspring health, leading to issues like low birth weight, high blood pressure, dyslipidemia, and insulin resistance. Given the increasing prevalence of overweight and obesity among reproductive-age women, effective interventions are critical...