FINALLY we have a clue as to why African-American women are more than twice as likely to give birth prematurely as women of European origin.
One in eight African-Americans carries a mutated version of a gene that may weaken membranes that support the fetus in the womb, a genetic analysis suggests, compared with just 1 in 25 Americans of European descent.
The mutation is of a gene known as SERPINH1, which encodes a protein that stabilises the structural protein collagen, say Jerome Strauss of Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, and colleagues (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,…
