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The sympathoadrenal system is activated in both the mother and fetus during parturition. The fetal plasma catecholamines may reach extremely high levels during deliveries complicated by asphyxia.Increased maternal sympathoadrenal activity during labour or caesarean section may negatively affect uteroplacental blood flow with possible adverse effects on the fetus. Such an increase may be avoided by adequate maternal pain relief and by the sympathetic blockade which follows epidural anaesthesia.Fetal sympathoadrenal activation during parturition seems on the contrary to be of positive functional importance both for fetal circulatory regulation in utero a well as for the neonatal adaptation in terms of pulmonary function and metabolic stimulation.

Pethidine (100 mg) was administered i.m. to women in labor at different times before delivery. The interval before respiration in the newborn became sustained was shorter if pethidine was given less than one hour before delivery. The respiratory rate of the newborn increased after naloxone injection in 40 per cent of the cases, mostly when intrauterine exposure to pethidine exceeded one hour. The plasma concentrations of pethidine and norpethidine were measured in mother and newborn. The concentrations in the umbilical vein and artery indicted a continuous net transfer of pethidine from mother to fetus for approximately two hours. This correlated with the clinical finding of maximal neonatal depression 2-3 hours after maternal injection. The concentrations of norpethidine increased with a longer time interval between injection and delivery, but were probably too low to have any effect on the newborn. Neonatal depression seems to be related to the amount of unmetabolized pethidine that has been transferred from mother to fetus but not to norpethidine as had been suspected earlier.

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