A closer look at the fetal programming hypothesis with obstetric ultrasound ?￠???? , ?￠?????￠????

摘要

Most, if not all, pregnant women in developed countrieswill have an ultrasound examination to time pregnancy andassess the health and development of the embryo or fetus.Nonetheless, surprisingly few cohort studies have used rou-tine health care or research ultrasound data to test theirhypotheses. Repeated ultrasound assessments during preg-nancy offer the opportunity to examine the association ofintra-uterine exposures with fetal growth and the associ-ation of fetal growth patterns with child outcomes. Moststudies of fetal programming simply rely on a proxy measure-ment of fetal growth: maternal or midwife report of birthweight. Birth outcomes are only crude summary measuresof fetal growth and cannot provide information on growthacross different times in pregnancy. Furthermore, individ-uals may reach the same birth weight through different fetalgrowth trajectories. Pinto et al. are to be complimented forthe use standardized clinical ultrasound conducted by oneclinician to test an important public health question: do chil-dren of anxious or depressed mothers have a worse start tolife even before they are born?