Determining the relationship between fetal malformation and preterm birth

Ensuring that babies are born as near as possible to 40 weeks, and not too early – called ‘prematurity’ or ‘preterm birth’ – is an important medical priority. Preterm (very small) babies have many health challenges, starting after birth and continuing into later life. Moreover, around 3% of all babies have structural or functional anomalies at birth (also called ‘birth defects’: e.g. spina bifida). These can seriously affect the child’s health, education and wellbeing. This project will investigate the link between birth defects and preterm birth. Pregnancies in which the fetus has a birth defect are much more likely to end prematurely than pregnancies where the fetus is healthy, although we do not understand why this happens. OBJECTIVES: This project will use mouse pregnancy as a test system to investigate how birth defects lead to premature birth. We can induce birth defects, genetically, in many of the mouse fetuses, and our preliminary results suggest this increases the risk of premature birth. We will look in the mother’s blood to identify biochemicals that differ in amount, when birth defects are present. We will also study the effect of altering the mother’s nutrition, as folic acid supplements seem to reduce the risk of human preterm birth. CLINICAL BENEFITS: Determining which factors lead to prematurity when a fetus has a birth defect might provide insight into the causes of premature birth more generally. For example, molecules that we discover to differ in this study can serve as ‘biomarkers’ to indicate when a human pregnancy is at special risk of preterm birth. Our work can also show whether improving folate nutrition is important in helping to reduce prematurity