BY THE time a woman goes into premature labour it is often too late to
stop the contractions, and the baby can be born with dangerously underdeveloped
organs. But researchers in Britain may now have found a way to predict
labour—weeks before it happens. This would allow for intervention earlier
and ensure a safer delivery.
“We could nip the whole cascade of events in the bud,” says Nigel Simpson, an
obstetrician and gynaecologist at the University of Leeds. He and his colleague
James Walker found that the electrical signals that stimulate muscle contraction
in the uterus change over the…
