Smoking during pregnancy is a significant risk factor for premature births, but drinking coffee is not, new research suggests.

Women who smoked during pregnancy were 2.6 times more likely to give birth prematurely compared to nonsmokers, a risk that was double that of previous estimates, the University of Cambridge scientists found.

"We've known for a long time that smoking during p...

Advisors to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will weigh the possibilities and parameters of experiments with artificial wombs for premature human babies.

Scientists have already had some success with the concept in animals.

During a two-day

Infants born three to six weeks early -- considered late preterm -- are at risk for learning problems, but they can be overcome, researchers say.

Preschool attendance and sensitive parenting can help them bridge the gap academically, a new study shows.

"Our findings highlight an opportunity for pediatric providers to offer prevention strategies to parents of late preterm infants to...

About 1 in 5 newborns hospitalized for surgery to treat a life-threatening bowel infection are given opioids for pain relief and some then need methadone to wean off the addictive drugs.

But there is wide variability in use of opioids after surgery in infants, and babies who need methadone tend to remain in the hospital a lot longer, a new study shows.

"Nobody wants a baby to be in ...

Black women have significantly more preterm births than white women do, and though almost a third of these extra cases can be explained by heart issues and social factors, the rest remain a mystery.

However, targeting those known factors could improve birth outcomes, a new study suggests. Social determinants of health include factors such as income, education, insurance and access to care...

Steroids are often unnecessarily prescribed to pregnant women thought to be at risk of preterm birth, a new evidence review contends.

As a result, millions of babies are needlessly exposed to long-term health problems associated with steroid use in gestation, such as increased risk of infection and delayed brain development, researchers say.

Steroids can't prevent preterm birth, but...

It's not only a mother's mental health that is tied to the risk for preterm birth -- the father's matters, too.

New research found that the risk of premature birth was higher for infants whose mothers or fathers had a psychiatric diagnosis than for those whose parents did not.

Researchers from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden analyzed data on all live births to Nordic parents in S...

About half of extremely preterm babies have at least one life-threatening bacterial infection in their bloodstream after 72 hours of life.

Now, new research points to the babies' own gut microbiomes as the source.

Knowing that the most common bacteria in bloodstream infections are also commonly found to colonize the gut without causing disease at first, researchers set out to test...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday formally withdrew its approval of a drug that was meant to prevent preterm births.

Sold as Makena, the drug was first approved in 2011 under the FDA's accelerated approval program, but subsequent research questioned the medication's effectiveness and noted serious side effects that included blood clots and depression.

"It is tragic t...

While an incubator can save the life of a premature baby, it may be contributing to hearing loss in these vulnerable infants.

A new study published March 27 in Frontiers in Pediatrics assessed the sounds in the neonatal intensive care unit, evaluating the impact on newborns.

"The motivation of our multidisciplinary research team concerns the question: why many more prematur...

Jennifer Canvasser had never heard of necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) before she gave birth to twins three months prematurely in 2011, but she has since devoted her life to raising awareness about this potentially fatal intestinal disease.

Her son Micah developed NEC when he was 6 weeks old and died of complications in December 2012.

He got sick quickly, and there were many ups and ...

Pregnant women will no longer have any drug to prevent preterm birth after the maker of the only available treatment announced Tuesday that it will withdraw its product, Makena, from the market.

Covis Pharma Group's decision follows a U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel vote last October that concluded the drug does not actually benefit newborns.

"While we stand by Mak...

Premature births dropped during lockdowns in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A groundbreaking study, which included a group of mostly high-income countries -- including the United States, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Denmark and Switzerland -- found there were about 4% fewer preterm births than would h...

Pregnant girls who are especially young, those only 10 to 15 years old, face increased risks for complications that include preeclampsia and C-section, according to new research.

Investigators from University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas also found that these young patients are more likely to have problems during pregnancy that are made worse by obesity.

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