Maternal Risk Factors for Fetal and Neonatal Brain Damage

Abstract

Prematurity is probably the major factor associated with brain damage in newborns. Our growing knowledge of the biochemical mechanisms leading to the onset of labour at term allows the biochemical correlates of the epidemiological risk factors for prematurity to be understood. Infection is the major cause of early preterm labour and is now recognised to be a major cause of fetal cerebral damage leading to cerebral palsy. Only some 5% of cerebral palsy is due to intrapartum asphyxia at term. This may occur due to an obstetric catastrophe or through inadequate placental function leading to chronic intrapartum asphyxia.

Fetal stress and programming of hypoxic/ischemic-sensitive phenotype in the neonatal brain: Mechanisms and possible interventions

“…Compromised cerebral blood flow (CBF) is the dominant pathogenetic mechanism for neuropathophysiology due to hypoxia-ischemia, which may arise from acute reduced materno/feto-placental blood flow or from chronically compromised fetal oxygen and energy supply (Perlman, 2006; Terzidou and Bennett, 2001). The resulting patterns of HIE injury consist of periventricular white matter lesions in preterm newborn; cortico-subcortical lesions, particularly in the sensomotor cortex, parasagittal region, and deep gray matter lesions of basal ganglia and thalamus in near-term and term newborns.…”