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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 i...

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 ...

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 premat...

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 M...

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...

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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Exposure to wildfire smoke can increase the risk of premature birth, new research suggests.

For the study, the researchers reviewed birth certificates and hospital delivery data for more than 2.5 million pregnant women in California from 2007 to 2012, and used satellite images and ZIP codes to compare daily estimates of wildfire smoke intensity.

The study found that from the four we...

Major pregnancy complications, such as preeclampsia and preterm birth, should be recognized as lifelong risk factors for women's heart disease, new research suggests.

Women who experience any of the five major pregnancy complications have an increased risk of ischemic heart disease up to 46 years after delivery, says the study published Feb. 1 in the BMJ.

The five compl...

By the time they're teenagers, babies born prematurely may be getting poorer school grades than their non-preemie peers.

Researchers found that babies born before 34 weeks of pregnancy had lower scores on math and language tests during their teen years compared to kids born at 40 weeks.

However, the study did not find a significant difference in later brain function in babies born b...

Kids who are the youngest in their grade may be overmedicated for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to a Norwegian researcher who studied prescribing data.

Those who were also born preterm were at particular risk of being overmedicated, said Dr. Christine Strand...

In U.S. states with more restrictive abortion policies, rates of pregnant women, new mothers and infants dying were higher, a new report finds.

The analysis, conducted by the Commonwealth Fund, found that states with heavily restricted...

Babies born prematurely who are fed formula may need iron supplementation like their breastfed counterparts, new research suggests.

“Just because a baby is on iron-rich formula, we should not assume all of their iron needs are being met, since iron from the formula may not have the same absorption as iron from breast milk,” said researcher Grace Power. She is a third-year medical stu...

More than 1 in every 10 births in the United States now occur prematurely, and the number of these more dangerous deliveries jumped by 4% during 2021, a new report from the March of Dimes shows.

The premature birth rate has now reached 10.5% of all births — the highest level since 2007, according to the organization focused on maternal and infant health.

In fact, rates of prematu...

A hormone therapy commonly used to prevent preterm births probably isn't effective, a new study reports.

Doctors have been prescribing vaginal progesterone treatments to help at-risk pregnant women delay delivery for as long as possible, researchers said.

But a new study involving more than 1,600 pregnant women with a history of early delivery revealed that vaginal progesterone had ...

Protecting pregnant women from air pollution may improve the birth weight of their babies, a new study suggests.

This is especially important for stressed-out mothers who live in neighborhoods burdened by poor air quality.

A mother-to-be's exposure to both

A U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory committee on Wednesday voted to recommend that a controversial drug meant to prevent premature births be pulled from the market.

FDA officials have said they want to withdraw...

In a three-day hearing that began Monday, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory committee will give the maker of a drug meant to prevent premature births a chance to show why its drug should not be pulled off the market.

FDA officials have