Fetal Lungs Protein Release Triggers Labor to Begin

We've long known that a mammal's lungs are the last organ to develop inutero before it is baby's time to exit. Disrupting this normal process (and initiating/inducing labor to start before a baby triggers labor on his/her own) frequently causes a cascade of complications - from difficulty in latch, poor breathing, increased infection, decreased immunity, under development, failure to thrive, and an increase in SIDS.

Now, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas researchers have found that it is in fact the fetal lungs themselves which provide the signal to initiate labor.

Drs. Carole Mendelson, Jennifer Condon and Pancharatnam Jeyasuria published findings that a substance secreted by the lungs of a developing fetus contains the key signal that initiates labor.

The protein released from the lungs of a developing mouse fetus initiates a cascade of chemical events leading to the mother's initiation of labor. This research, which has implications for humans, marks the first time a link between a specific fetal lung protein and labor has been identified, said Mendelson, professor of BioChemistry and Obstetrics and Gynecology and senior author of the study. Their research appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and is currently available online here.

The initiation of term labor is carefully timed to begin only after the embryo is sufficiently mature to survive outside the womb. Previous studies suggested that the signal for labor in humans may arise from the fetus, but the nature of the signal and actual mechanism was unclear. In this study, researchers found that the key labor triggering substance, surfactant, is essential for normal breathing outside the womb.

"We found that a protein within lung, surfactant, serves as a hormone of labor that signals to the mother's uterus when the fetal lungs are sufficiently mature to withstand the critical transition from life in fluid to airbreathing," said Mendelson.

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Worth The Wait: Curbing The Practice Of Deliveries Before 39 Weeks

Waiting. In our daily lives, we greet it with frustration, and even irritation. But when it comes to childbirth, the time we spend waiting can affect whether a child is born healthy, or not, and sets a baby on a path toward lifelong health.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently launched an important initiative, Strong Start, to prevent premature births, a public health problem that costs society an estimated $26 billion a year. That initiative aims to improve prenatal care for pregnant women, but its focus is also on curbing the unsafe practice of scheduling elective, medically unnecessary deliveries before the 39 week mark.

That's an important step, but more must be done to reduce the threat posed by elective deliveries of healthy babies before 39 weeks, which often are scheduled for reasons that have more to do with convenience than with health.

More than half a million infants are born prematurely in the United States each year, a number that has increased 36 percent since the early 1980s. We also know that 25 percent of those births are due to early elective deliveries -- either by inducing labor early, or by scheduling a cesarean section.

That's a dangerous trend that continues, despite a growing body of scientific studies that indicate that babies born before the 39 week mark run a high risk of underdeveloped organs, infections and other health problems that can lead to disabling conditions that can last a lifetime.

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