Breakthrough paves the way for treatments preventing premature births

Scientists from the University of Sheffield have discovered that a key gene in the womb, which stops labour occurring too early, is switched off by inflammation in the uterus at the time labour begins - a discovery which paves the way for developing new treatments to prevent premature births. In the UK premature birth affects roughly one in 10 deliveries and complications arising from pre-term birth are a leading cause of deaths amongst new-born babies. Babies that survive going into labour too soon are at an increased risk of developing long-term medical and developmental problems including cerebral palsy, breathing difficulties, deafness and blindness. These conditions will affect a child for the rest of their life. The process behind how women go into normal term labour is still poorly understood, but it is vital that it happens at the right time when the baby is ready to be born and can survive. Currently there are few reliable drugs that can be used to stop labour if it starts too early. The ground breaking research, led by Neil Chapman from the University of Sheffield's Medical School in collaboration with a team of multidisciplinary researchers from Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and the Universities of Newcastle and Nottingham, focuses on how inflammation in the uterus affected an experimental class of drugs called histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACi), which aim to delay labour when it starts prematurely.