University of California San Francisco
Give to UCSFThe mammalian placenta is a sort of armored car protecting a developing fetus. All manner of infectious agents attempt to break in, but few of them can. Scientists are working to understand why some infections do break through and how to stop them.
In Texas, increases in travel distance to the nearest abortion clinic caused by clinic closures were closely associated with decreases in the official number of abortions.
Mitochondrial replacement therapy now has been used in humans to conceive a “three-parent baby” to prevent inherited mitochondrial disorders, but there remain questions about the effectiveness of the process.
A newly identified bacterial protein that is shown to jump-start infection may be the culprit in a foodborne disease that strikes pregnant women in disproportionately high numbers, leading to miscarriage and pre-term birth.
UC San Francisco researchers have visualized the earliest stages of pregnancy in unprecedented detail in laboratory animals and human tissue using new laboratory imaging techniques.
UCSF researchers identified fetal brain tissue cells that are targeted by the Zika virus and determined that azithromycin can prevent the virus from infecting these cells.
UCSF researchers found a way to pause the development of early mouse embryos for up to a month in the lab, a finding with implications for assisted reproduction, regenerative medicine, aging and cancer.
Ethical quandaries such as testing for a woman’s risk for preterm birth are still being worked out by the medical community.
Low income and Latina pregnant women who seek care at ZSFG have widespread exposure to environmental pollutants, many of which show up in higher levels in newborns.