A team of researchers has found a genetic variation that seem to be associated with a risk of premature birth. Another team of researchers finds that premature birth risk runs in families. You may want to speak with your relatives to see how great a risk of premature birth runs in your family.
Scientists in the United States and Finland published a study that they hope can someday lead to a test that would identify women who were are risk of a pre-term birth. One of the things the researchers looked at was human evolution. The scientific name for humans is Homo Sapiens. This reflects the Species, sapiens, and the Genus, Homo. Humans are in the Hominidea Family.
Humans are also in the Order called Primates. Scientists compared the physiology of humans with some of the other mammals that humans share their Order with. From this, they noted that human infants have relatively large heads, and human adult females have narrow birth canals (when compared to the physiology of other primates). This caused the scientists to conclude that there must be evolutionary pressure to shift the time of birth to sooner, in order to produce a smaller baby.
Next, they looked for genetic evidence that could back up that hypothesis. They found 150 genes that seemed relevant. They compared the 150 genes to the genes of 328 Finnish mothers, some of whom had premature births, and some whom had not. This revealed some variants of the FSHR gene, which seems to be strongly associated with premature births. Perhaps, in the future, a test could be designed to identify mothers who have that particular gene variant.
Another group of researchers, from the University of Aberdeen, did a study that was based on maternity records of 22,343 Scottish mothers and their daughters. They found that women who were born prematurely, or who had siblings that were born prematurely, are between 50% and 60% more likely to have a premature baby themselves. It seems to be an inherited risk.
The records that the researchers looked at related to single births only, and did not include data from twins or other multiple pregnancies. Overall, the study found that mothers who were themselves born prematurely were, on average, 60% more likely to have a baby that was also born prematurely, if this was the mother’s first pregnancy. If the mother has more pregnancies, each one had a 50% risk of a premature birth occurring.
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