DNA differences which appear to affect the risk of giving birth early have been found by US scientists.

The US National Institutes of Health study found the variants in both babies and mothers, a US conference was told.

It is thought they may play a role in controlling immune responses which could theoretically trigger labour if they become too powerful.

Premature birth – which accounts for 7% of UK births – is one of the biggest threats to a baby’s future health.

The causes of premature birth are poorly understood, although infections and other medical complications are blamed in some cases.

The study looked at 700 DNA variants in 190 genes in women who delivered early, and those who carried their baby to term.

The cord blood of the babies was also tested for these variations.

They narrowed the search down to a handful of gene variations found more often in the women who gave birth prematurely, and their babies.

In particular, babies who carried the gene for the “Interleukin 6 receptor” were more likely to be born early.

This was a good candidate gene because Interleukin 6 is produced by cells in response to infection and is involved in inflammation.

High levels of Interleukin 6 in the amniotic fluid and foetal blood have been linked to the onset of premature labour.

Baby threat

Dr Roberto Romero, who led the study, said: “Our hypothesis is that the mother and/or the foetus signal the onset of preterm labour when the environment inside the uterus is unfavourable and threatens the survival of the maternal-foetal pair.

“When there is an infection in the uterus, the onset of premature labour appears to have survival value – it would allow the mother to rid herself of infected tissue and preserve her ability to have future pregnancies.”

The chief executive of charity Bliss, Andy Cole, welcomed the study results.

“In England alone, 54,000 babies are born prematurely each year, a third of these for no known reason,” he said.

“The development of a reliable test for identifying these mothers is vital in ensuring our most vulnerable babies have the best possible outcomes.”

A new study conducted by Danish scientists has found that vitamin C-deficient babies may be at a higher risk for mental development and memory problems.

A team of researchers from the Faculty of Life Sciences at the University of Copenhagen showed that guinea pigs with moderate vitamin C deficiency develop 30 percent fewer hippocampal neurons and have significantly worse spatial memory than animals fed a normal diet.

The choice of animals was dictated by the fact that guinea pigs, like human beings, are dependent on getting vitamin C through their diet.

“[Our research suggests] children [may develop] learning disabilities because they have not gotten enough vitamin C in their early life,” says Professor Jens Lykkesfeldt, who led the research group.

“This is unbearable when it would be so easy to prevent this deficiency by giving a vitamin supplement to high-risk pregnant women and new mothers,” he adds.

Vitamin C is also a known antioxidant and is believed to boost immunity and lower the risk of infections such as seasonal flu, so those concerned about their intake may turn to nutritional supplements.

German researchers say babies begin to pick up the nuances of their parents’ accents while still in the womb.

The researchers studied the cries of 60 healthy babies born to families speaking French and German.

The French newborns cried with a rising “accent” while the German babies’ cries had a falling inflection.

Writing in the journal Current Biology, they say the babies are probably trying to form a bond with their mothers by imitating them.

The findings suggest that unborn babies are influenced by the sound of the first language that penetrates the womb.

Cry melodies

It was already known that foetuses could memorise sounds from the outside world in the last three months of pregnancy and were particularly sensitive to the contour of the melody in both music and human voices.

Earlier studies had shown that infants could match vowel sounds presented to them by adult speakers, but only from 12 weeks of age.

Kathleen Wermke from the University of Wurzburg, who led the research, said: “The dramatic finding of this study is that not only are human neonates capable of producing different cry melodies, but they prefer to produce those melody patterns that are typical for the ambient language they have heard during their foetal life.

“Contrary to orthodox interpretations, these data support the importance of human infants’ crying for seeding language development.”

Dr Wermke’s team recorded and analysed the cries of 60 healthy newborns when they were three to five days old.

Their analysis revealed clear differences in the shape of the infants’ cry melodies that corresponded to their mother tongue.

They say the babies need only well-co-ordinated respiratory-laryngeal systems to imitate melody contours and not the vocal control that develops later.

Dr Wermke said: “Newborns are highly motivated to imitate their mother’s behaviour in order to attract her and hence to foster bonding.

“Because melody contour may be the only aspect of their mother’s speech that newborns are able to imitate, this might explain why we found melody contour imitation at that early age.”

Debbie Mills, a reader in developmental cognitive neuroscience at Bangor University, said: “This is really interesting because it suggests that they are producing sounds they have heard in the womb and that means learning and that it is not an innate behaviour.

“Many of the early infant behaviours are almost like reflexes that go away after the first month and then come back later in a different form.

“It would be interesting to look at these babies after a month and see if their ability to follow the melodic contours of their language is still there.”

Being Overweight or Obese Before Pregnancy May Be Tied to Increased Risk of Congenital Heart Defects

Women who are overweight or obese before getting pregnant may be more likely than leaner women to have babies born with heart defects, a new study shows.

The study, published in the advance online edition of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, included the mothers of 6,440 babies born with congenital heart defects between 1997 and 2004.

In telephone interviews, the mothers reported their pre-pregnancy height, weight, and various lifestyle and medical factors.

For comparison, the researchers asked the same questions of 5,673 women who had babies during the same time period without heart defects.

Compared to women with a normal BMI (body mass index), women who were overweight but not obese before pregnancy were 16% more likely to have a baby born with a heart defect.

By the same comparison, women who were moderately obese before pregnancy (BMI of 30-34.9) were 15% more likely to have a baby born with heart defects.

Women who were severely obese before pregnancy (BMI greater than 35) were 31% more likely to have a baby born with a heart defect.

“Congenital heart defects are the most common types of birth defect, and among all birth defects, they are a leading cause of illness, death, and medical expenditures,” Edwin Trevathan, MD, MPH, director of the CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Disabilities, says in a news release.

“Women who are obese and who are planning a pregnancy could benefit by working with their physicians to achieve a healthy weight before pregnancy,” Trevathan says.

The study doesn’t prove that the women’s extra weight caused birth defects in their babies. Observational studies like this one can show associations, but they don’t prove cause and effect.

Also, the women reported their height and weight; they weren’t measured. Self reports of weight aren’t always accurate, and that could have affected the results.

However, the researchers considered factors including maternal age, and they excluded mothers with type 1 or type 2 diabetes, because diabetes is a strong risk factor for heart defects.

“These results support previous studies, as well as provide additional evidence, that there is an association between a woman being overweight or obese before pregnancy and certain types of heart defects,” Suzanne Gilboa, PhD, an epidemiologist at CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, says in a news release.

“This provides another reason for women to maintain a healthy weight. In addition to the impact on a woman’s own health and known pregnancy complications associated with maternal obesity, the baby’s health could be at risk,” says Gilboa, who worked on the new study.

Gilboa’s study only compares the odds of having a baby with a heart defect; it doesn’t show the odds that any given woman, of any size, would have a baby with a heart defect.

Breast milk delivered in the morning gives infants a pick-me-up because it contains natural stimulants.

But the night-time version will help babies sleep thanks to calming chemical compounds, a report claims.

This means mums who express milk for feeding from a bottle should make sure it is given to baby at the same time it came from the breast – otherwise it could disrupt sleeping patterns. The report in the journal Nutritional Neuroscience might explain why some babies sleep or become active at odd times of day or night when working mothers express milk for use later in the day.

They could be giving morning milk in the evening and vice versa.

Spanish researchers discovered the chemical make-up of breast milk changes across a 24-hour period.

A woman’s body adapts the amount it produces of nucleotides – compounds used to regulate a baby’s sleep or promote activity-Breast milk has three different nucleotides – adenosine, guanosine and uridine – and the combination between them decides whether a baby is restless or sleepy or normally active.

The scientists from the University of Extremadura looked at samples of breast milk taken at eight different points of the day from a group of new mothers.

The nucleotide concentrations during the night were at their most sleep-inducing but less so during the day.

Researcher Cristina Sanchez said ‘You wouldn’t give anyone a coffee at night, and the same is true of milk.

‘It has day-specific ingredients that stimulate-activity in the infant, and other nighttime components that help the baby to rest.

‘It is a mistake for the mother to express the milk at a certain time and then store it and feed it to the baby at a different time.’

NHS experts say breastfeeding gives babies all the nutrients they need for the first six months of life.

Research published earlier this year found women who breastfeed are less likely to have high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol, and heart disease.

Other studies have shown breastfeeding helps protect mothers against ovarian and breast cancer, and osteoporosis in later life.

More than half of babies now born in the UK and other wealthy nations will live to 100 years, researchers say.

The study, published in The Lancet journal, also says the extra years are spent with less serious disability.

Data from more than 30 developed countries shows that since 1950 the probability of surviving past 80 years of age has doubled for both sexes.

One expert said healthy behaviours for all ages was the key to enjoying living a long life.

Professor Kaare Christensen, of the Danish Ageing Research Centre at the University of Southern Denmark, who led the study, said life expectancy had been increasing since 1840 and there was no sign of this trend slowing down.

He said: “The linear increase in record life expectancy for more than 165 years does not suggest a looming limit to human lifespan.

“If life expectancy were approaching a limit, some deceleration of progress would probably occur.”

In 1950 the probability of surviving for between 80 and 90 years of age was, on average, 15 to 16% for women and 12% for men.

In 2002, these figures had risen to 37% for women and 25% for men.

The study points out that until the 1920s, improvements in infant and childhood survival contributed most to the increase in life expectancies.

Since then the increases have been fuelled by progress in the survival of the elderly, which has been particularly evident since the 1970s.

Four ‘ages of man’

The researchers said that man could now be regarded as having four stages of life – child, adult, young old age and old old age.

They said there was no evidence that the old old age group were unhealthier than their younger counterparts, partly because the frailest people died first, leaving the most robust to survive past 85.

Danish research had shown that as many as 30% to 40% of individuals were independent from the ages of 92 to 100.

And a study of US super-centenarians (age 110 to 119 years) showed that, even at these advanced ages, 40% needed little assistance or were independent.

Professor Christensen said that in the UK and other countries there was evidence of a postponement in the limitations and disabilities caused by ill-health, despite an increase in chronic diseases.

This was because of improvements in the diagnosis and treatment of illnesses such as heart disease and cancer.

He said: “Increasing numbers of people at old and very old ages will pose major challenges for health-care systems.

“Present evidence, however, suggests that people are not only living longer than they did previously, but also they are living longer, with less disability and fewer functional limitations.”

Some researchers have suggested that growing rates of obesity will limit lifespan – but Professor Christensen said such predictions were too simplistic.

He said: “Life is a lottery and some obese people will live to a 100 and some thin people will die early. ”

Professor Alan Maryon-Davis, president of the Faculty of Public Health, said there were still concerns that obesity and unhealthy behaviours would shorten many people’s lives.

He said: “It’s great that as a nation we’re living longer and staying younger – but let’s do what we can to help those who find it harder to lead healthy lives.”

The Department of Health said rising life expectancy would have an impact on the future funding of care services in England.

A spokesman said it would look at the study’s findings.

“We know that the shape of our society is changing… We want to make sure that people who are living longer continue to enjoy a good quality of life. By 2040 we expect 1.7m more adults will have a care need.

“We want to be able to offer really good care to everyone who needs it, so we need to radically change the way the system is funded.”

Plans for a National Care Service to provide free at-home support for elderly people in the greatest need were announced by the prime minister at the Labour Party conference.