Preterm Birth

In this event professor Carole Mendelson’s discussion was primarily about how the fetus itself signals to the mother when its ready to be born. She also mentioned some of the mechanisms behind the signaling and how this signal is initiated. In the unites states only, about 15 million babies are born immaturely. The rate of preterm birth is approximately 11 percent; about 450,000 babies a year are born immaturely and a lot of them die. This is a very high number which is why this issue needs more attention. A normal term is 40 weeks, preterm is considered to be 37 weeks or less. Immature babies sometimes develop respiratory destress syndrome, immaturity of the lungs by the date of birth mainly because of the lack of the protein surfactant.

Professor Mendelson’s work in lab focuses on progesterone. progesterone is crucial for maintaining uterine quiescence during pregnancy this is due to it’s anti-inflammatory action. in most mammals the levels of circulating progesterone are high throughout most of pregnancies and then they decline during labor. Which makes sense since labor and the level of progesterone have an inverse relationship. Both term and preterm labor are associated with an increase in an inflammatory response. the fetus signals to the mother that it is ready to be born …show more content…
First is that the fact that fetus its self signals to the mother when its ready, not the mother who signals to the fetus. Second, professor Carole mentioned that labor can be the body’s way of rejecting the fetus which can be considered as a foreign object. Another statistic or fact that made me curios is that African American women had a higher percentage of preterm labor than any other race. There a lot of things that still remain a mystery about labor and the signaling of the fetus. But preterm labor is defiantly a worldwide dilemma that we lose a lot of souls to, which is why we need to find better ways to prevent