Narrow Results

To determine whether the maternal administration of Wu-Ling-San during pregnancy affects amniotic fluid volume, we measured the fluid levels in pregnant women who either had or hadn't been administrated Wu-Ling-San. We investigated 504 amniotic pocket (AP) measurements in 61 healthy pregnant women, 437 AP measurements in 71 untreated pregnant women who exhibited pretibial edema during pregnancy, and 82 AP measurements in 21 pregnant women who exhibited pretibial edema during pregnancy and were treated with Wu-Ling-San therapy (Goreisan, 7.5 g/day). Among the 3 groups, differences in AP were not observed prior to 35 weeks of gestation. After 36 weeks of gestation, AP measures were significantly higher in the Wu-Ling-San-treated group (3.78 ± 0.81 cm), compared to the untreated group (3.34 ± 0.79 cm) (p = 0.0036). We identified no significant AP differences between the Wu-Ling-San-treated and control groups. Our findings indicate that the administration of Wu-Ling-San to pregnant women with pretibial edema can prevent subsequent reductions in amniotic fluid volume. Thus, Wu-Ling-San may be helpful in the treatment of oligoamnios.

New Womb-Like Invention for Preterm Infants.

Reversing Paralysis: Can I Walk Again?

Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) are much more common in males, a bias that may offer clues to the etiology of this condition. We argue that it occurs because ASC are an extreme manifestation of the male brain. The extreme male brain (EMB) theory, first proposed in 1997, is an extension of the Empathizing-Systemizing (E-S) theory of typical sex differences that proposes that females on average have a stronger drive to empathize while males on average have a stronger drive to systemize. In this chapter, we describe some of the evidence relating to the EMB theory of ASC and consider how typical sex differences in brain structure may be relevant to ASC. One possible biological mechanism to account for the male bias is the effect of fetal testosterone (fT). The weight of evidence in favor of the fT theory is growing from converging sources (longitudinal studies from gestation to age 10 years old based on fT in amniotic fluid, current hormone studies, and genetic association studies of SNPs in genes involved in the sex steroid biosynthetic pathways). The strong test of the fT theory will come from the large collaborative study with the Danish biobank that is adequately powered to test if fT and the related fetal steroids in the Δ4 pathway are elevated in children who go on to develop ASC.