For the first time, researchers have mapped biochemical substances called metabolites in amniotic fluid, and that finding has yielded important clues to determining which women who experience preterm labor are also at risk for delivering prematurely.The news, announced Thursday at the 25th annual Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine meeting in Reno, Nev., marks a potential new advance in the management of pregnant women who go into preterm labor. Clinicians one day may be able to perform simple tests to predict which women will deliver at term and which ones will require aggressive treatment to delay their delivery.
