Miscarriage

The interment of infants in ceramic receptacles was a fairly widespread funerary practice in southern Africa during the Iron Age. Using the rich source of ethnographic data on child-death and mortuary practices among Southeast Bantu speakers, we explore the cultural significance and symbolic meaning of an infant pot burial uncovered on Melora Saddle, an early nineteenth-century African farmer settlement on the Waterberg Plateau, Limpopo Province. The skeletal remains belong to a perinatal individual, aged between 34 weeks gestation and newborn. The short-necked jar was interred in an upright position either inside, or close to, a house. Ethnographic data show that a conceptual link was made between a woman's reproductive capacity and the land's fertility, as well as between potting and procreation. A close symbolic link existed between pots, wombs, mothers and their houses. Child-birth and child-death were fraught with ritual danger that had to be averted to ensure the well-being of the family and the community. Any deviations from the natural order of things generated pollution (heat or dirt), which threatened a woman's fertility and a lineage's continuation. Such ritual impurity not only destabilised the social order, but also disturbed the natural order, as a result of which the rains, the ultimate sign of a community's well-being, might stay away. To counter the ritual danger, and thereby to restore a woman's fertility and avoid a drought, foetuses and infants were buried in jars, either in a cool, wet place in the bank of a river, or inside a house or in the shade under its eaves. As in the case of the Melora Saddle jar, the bases of such burial vessels were often deliberately perforated, evidently a symbolic act to ensure that a woman would become pregnant again. Ash, representing an extinguished fire, served as an important cooling agent in such burials, which would account for the location of several midden burials uncovered in Iron Age sites.

The objective: to study the features of the course of pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period in women with a history of surgical treatment of ovarian apoplexy.
Materials and methods. The study involved 62 women in labor (main group, n=62), who were operated on for ovarian apoplexy before pregnancy, and 60 patients in the control group (n=60), who did not have this pathology in the anamnesis. The average age of women was 26,1±2,3 years, the time interval from an episode of ovarian apoplexy to pregnancy was 5,44±2,7 years. Re-apoplexy was observed in 2 cases (3,22%).
Results. The study found that the main complication in the first trimester of pregnancy was reproductive loss, mainly in the form of a stillborn pregnancy. In the early stages of gestation, the threat of abortion was 3 times more often observed in the main group than in the control group. In the second trimester draws attention to several facts of complications that are characteristic of patients in the main group: the widespread prevalence of acute or chronic infectious pathology in the acute stage (51,6% vs. 11,7% in the control group), the development of preeclampsia 2 times more often among pregnant women with ovarian apoplexy (38,7% vs. 20,0%), as well as mild anemia (40,3% vs. 21,6%).
The results of the study indicate a high frequency of premature ejaculation of amniotic fluid in pregnant women with ovarian apoplexy (29,0% vs. 13,3%), rapid labor (16,1% vs. 1,7%), umbilical cord entanglement (33,9% vs. 15,0%), hypotonic bleeding in the early postpartum period (14,5% vs. 1,67%). The frequency of cesarean section did not differ significantly in both groups (p>0,05). The assessment of newborns on the Apgar scale had no statistically significant differences.
Conclusion. Pregnant women who have a history of surgical treatment of ovarian apoplexy are at risk for developing early miscarriage, complicated gestation, childbirth and the postpartum period. Analysis of the reproductive function of women in the study groups reflected the problems of gestation mainly in the early stages in the form of reproductive loss or symptoms of miscarriage, in the late stages of pregnancy complications were mainly due to extragenital pathology.
The data obtained during the study in practice should contribute to the development of rehabilitation measures and pre-pregnancy training, which are aimed at restoring reproductive health and prevention of complications of pregnancy and childbirth in women at risk.

What are the specific lived experiences Latina women face when it comes to miscarriage? Research by Leach and colleagues (Leach, Wojnar & Pettinato 2014) suggests that Latina women face unique, and similar, experiences when it comes to early pregnancy loss. These differences reflect not only intercultural but also cross-cultural opportunities for care. According to this study, a central experience of some Latina women is "grieving in silence,", identifying five core features of their experiences: (1) Becoming aware of impending loss; (2) Searching for meaning; (3) Experiencing cultural influences: Receiving no support; (4) Having healthcare interactions: Dealing with indifference and lack of support; and (5) Living through loss and moving on. Participants attributed their sense of loneliness to their Hispanic culture, having received no support from their social networks and even from members who typically fill traditional caring roles. I address the cultural and religious ritual of Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) as a way to counteract loneliness and a lack of social support for Latina women who experience miscarriage. Keywords Miscarriage, ritual studies, ethics of care, compassion-based contemplative practice, psychology and religion Death and dying are natural phenomena that affect all living beings. Culturally and religiously, humans have developed practices to make sense of this process and to transition through this passage since the beginning of times. Death is indeed the ultimate rite of passage, but how can we empower our participation in it as individuals and communities? Specifically,

SUMMARY. Cannabis has an ancient tradition of usage as a medicine in obstetrics and gynecology. This study presents that history in the literature to the present era, compares it to current ethnobotanical, clinical and epide-miological reports, and examines it in light of modern developments in cannabinoid research. The author believes that cannabis extracts may represent an efficacious and safe alternative for treatment of a wide range of conditions in women including dysmenorrhea, dysuria, hyperemesis gravidarum, and meno-pausal symptoms. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Docu-

The interment of infants in ceramic receptacles was a fairly widespread funerary practice in southern Africa during the Iron Age. Using the rich source of ethnographic data on child-death and mortuary practices among Southeast Bantu speakers, we explore the cultural significance and symbolic meaning of an infant pot burial uncovered on Melora Saddle, an early nineteenth-century African farmer settlement on the Waterberg Plateau, Limpopo Province. The skeletal remains belong to a perinatal individual, aged between 34 weeks gestation and newborn. The short-necked jar was interred in an upright position either inside, or close to, a house. Ethnographic data show that a conceptual link was made between a woman's reproductive capacity and the land's fertility, as well as between potting and procreation. A close symbolic link existed between pots, wombs, mothers and their houses. Childbirth and child-death were fraught with ritual danger that had to be averted to ensure the well-being of the family and the community. Any deviations from the natural order of things generated pollution (heat or dirt), which threatened a woman's fertility and a lineage's continuation. Such ritual impurity not only destabilised the social order, but also disturbed the natural order, as a result of which the rains, the ultimate sign of a community's well-being, might stay away. To counter the ritual danger, and thereby to restore a woman's fertility and avoid a drought, foetuses and infants were buried in jars, either in a cool, wet place in the bank of a river, or inside a house or in the shade under its eaves. As in the case of the Melora Saddle jar, the bases of such burial vessels were often deliberately perforated, evidently a symbolic act to ensure that a woman would become pregnant again. Ash, representing an extinguished fire, served as an important cooling agent in such burials, which would account for the location of several midden burials uncovered in Iron Age sites.

Reproductive diseases have become a growing worldwide problem and male factor plays an important role in the reproductive diagnosis, prognosis and design of assisted reproductive treatments. Sperm cell holds the mission of carrying the paternal genetic complement to the oocyte in order to contribute to an euploid zygote with proper DNA integrity. Sperm DNA fragmentation had been used for decades as a male fertility test, however, its usefulness have arisen multiple debates, especially around Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI) treatments. In the recent years, it has been described that different types of sperm DNA breaks (single and double strand DNA breaks) cause different clinical reproductive effects. On one hand, single-strand DNA breaks are present extensively as a multiple break points in all regions of the genome, are related to oxidative stress and cause a lack of clinical pregnancy or an increase of the conception time. On the other hand, double-strand DNA breaks are ma...

The interment of infants in ceramic receptacles was a fairly widespread funerary practice in southern Africa during the Iron Age. Using the rich source of ethnographic data on child-death and mortuary practices among Southeast Bantu speakers, we explore the cultural significance and symbolic meaning of an infant pot burial uncovered on Melora Saddle, an early nineteenth-century African farmer settlement on the Waterberg Plateau, Limpopo Province. The skeletal remains belong to a perinatal individual, aged between 34 weeks gestation and newborn. The short-necked jar was interred in an upright position either inside, or close to, a house. Ethnographic data show that a conceptual link was made between a woman’s reproductive capacity and the land’s fertility, as well as between potting and procreation. A close symbolic link existed between pots, wombs, mothers and their houses. Child-birth and child-death were fraught with ritual danger that had to be averted to ensure the well-being of...

The interment of infants in ceramic receptacles was a fairly widespread funerary practice in southern Africa during the Iron Age. Using the rich source of ethnographic data on child-death and mortuary practices among Southeast Bantu speakers, we explore the cultural significance and symbolic meaning of an infant pot burial uncovered on Melora Saddle, an early nineteenth-century African farmer settlement on the Waterberg Plateau, Limpopo Province. The skeletal remains belong to a perinatal individual, aged between 34 weeks gestation and newborn. The short-necked jar was interred in an upright position either inside, or close to, a house. Ethnographic data show that a conceptual link was made between a woman’s reproductive capacity and the land’s fertility, as well as between potting and procreation. A close symbolic link existed between pots, wombs, mothers and their houses. Child-birth and child-death were fraught with ritual danger that had to be averted to ensure the well-being of...

Stress is normal during early embryogenesis and transient, elevated stress is commonplace. Stress in the milieu of the peri-implantation embryo is a summation of maternal hormones, and other elements of the maternal milieu, that signal preparedness for development and implantation. Examples discussed here are leptin, adrenaline, cortisol, and progesterone. These hormones signal maternal nutritional status and provide energy, but also signal stress that diverts maternal and embryonic energy from an optimal embryonic developmental trajectory. These hormones communicate endocrine maternal effects and local embryonic effects although signaling mechanisms are not well understood. Other in vivo stresses affect the embryo such as local infection and inflammation, hypoxia, environmental toxins such as benzopyrene, dioxin, or metals, heat shock, and hyperosmotic stress due to dehydration or diabetes. In vitro, stresses include shear during handling, improper culture media and oxygen levels, cryopreservation, and manipulations of the embryo to introduce sperm or mitochondria. We define stress as any stimulus that slows stem cell accumulation or diminishes the ability of cells to produce

For the clinical applications of regenerative medicine, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) (all acronyms are defined in the Glossary at the end of the text) have advantages over embryonic stem cells (ESCs) in histocompatibility and the lack of reliance on embryo derivation. Induction of pluripotency can be achieved by transiently expressing a minimal set of transcription factors (TF)s to reprogram differentiated cells. Direct reprogramming of somatic cells into progenitor stem or other mature cells would eliminate the need to make iPSCs, and then direct differentiation and select the desired lineage. Another advantage of direct reprogramming is that by avoiding the pluripotent step, one mitigates the risk of tumorigenicity. Direct reprogramming requires knowledge of the reprogramming factors and knowledge of the culture conditions necessary to maintain the induced multipotent stem cells. The culture conditions for mouse trophoblast stem cells (TSC)s were defined in the 1990s (1, 2). Knowledge of how to reprogram mouse fibroblast cells to multipotent TSC has now been provided by two recent publications from the Buganim (3) and the Schorle labs (4). These studies inform not only regenerative medicine but will also aid our understanding of normal and pathological placental development in early pregnancy.

The objective: to study the features of the clinical course of the first trimester of pregnancy, complicated by the threat of abortion with the formation of retrochorial hematoma (RCH).
Materials and methods. 100 pregnant women aged 18–44 years (average age 28.08±3.5 years) in 6–13 weeks of gestation were examined. The main group consisted of 70 patients and was divided into two subgroups: subgroup A (n=40) – 40 primigravida women with the threat of abortion and RCH; subgroup B (n=30) – 30 multigravida women with the threat of abortion and RCH and a complicated obstetric and gynecological history. Control group (n=30) – primi- and multigravida women with physiological course of the current and previous pregnancies. All women had a complete clinical and laboratory examination, ultrasound examination of the uterus and fetus with Doppler, determination of the infectious profile (bacterioscopy).
Results. The majority of the patients in all groups had a complicated somatic history, while in half of the cases there was a combination of two or more somatic diseases – in 45.7% of pregnant women in the main group and 33.3% – control group. 32.9% of women in the main group had a genetically determined form of thrombophilia. A complicated obstetrical and gynecological history was established in 22.5% of patients in subgroup A, 30% – subgroup B and 16.6% of pregnant women in the control group.
Mostly, inflammatory diseases of the pelvic organs were detected in the main group – 15–21.4% (in both subgroups) and previous surgery on the pelvic organs (11.4% in total). A high incidence of spontaneous miscarriages was found in patients of subgroup B (13–43.3%). Every fourth pregnant woman in the main group had a 3–4 degree of purity of vaginal smears. For the first time, the hematoma was diagnosed before 6 weeks of gestation in 8% of pregnant women of subgroup A (2.5% of these patients had a spontaneous abortion at 9–10 weeks) and in 30% of women in subgroup B (23.3% of them had an interruption of pregnancy at 7–12 weeks).
The corporal location of RCH was found in 28.6% of patients in the main group (15.7% and 12.9% in subgroups, respectively), supracervical – 71.4% (almost the same in both subgroups), while hematomas of more than 25 cm3 were detected in 8 patients of the main group (25% and 75% in subgroups, respectively), all of such RCH were located corporally. In 70% of supracervical RCH, a small and medium volume of hematoma was diagnosed, which was in 1.5 times more often detected in pregnant women of subgroup A. Hematomas of a larger size were found in 3 times more often in women of subgroup B.
The main clinical symptoms of threatened abortion with the formation of RCH were bleeding from the genital tract (53–75.7%), pain syndrome (48–68.5%), uterine hypertonus or a combination of these symptoms (39–55.7%).
Conclusions. The presence of chronic extragenital pathology, chronic urogenital infection, surgical interventions on the pelvic organs, a high frequency of artificial and spontaneous abortions, recurrent miscarriage, a history of missed pregnancy in combination with a large volume of RCH, the corporal location of PCH, the term of gestation in which a hematoma is found, as well as ultrasound signs of uterine hypertonus are unfavorable predictors of early miscarriage and reproductive losses.

The interment of infants in ceramic receptacles was a fairly widespread funerary practice in southern Africa during the Iron Age. Using the rich source of ethnographic data on child-death and mortuary practices among Southeast Bantu speakers, we explore the cultural significance and symbolic meaning of an infant pot burial uncovered on Melora Saddle, an early nineteenth-century African farmer settlement on the Waterberg Plateau, Limpopo Province. The skeletal remains belong to a perinatal individual, aged between 34 weeks gestation and newborn. The short-necked jar was interred in an upright position either inside, or close to, a house. Ethnographic data show that a conceptual link was made between a woman’s reproductive capacity and the land’s fertility, as well as between potting and procreation. A close symbolic link existed between pots, wombs, mothers and their houses. Child-birth and child-death were fraught with ritual danger that had to be averted to ensure the well-being of...

Study objective: to determine the dynamics of type 9 metalloproteinase (MMP-9) and its tissue inhibitor-1 (TIMP-1) in the pathogenesis of early miscarriage in women with chronic diseases of the hepatobiliary system.
Materials and methods. The study included 39 women with a history of early pregnancy miscarriage, who were diagnosed with chronic liver diseases as a result of clinical, instrumental and laboratory studies (17 persons with steatosis and 22 persons with non-alcoholic steatohepatitis). The control group consisted of 8 women without somatic pathology and 8 pregnant women at the first trimester of gestation. MMP-9 and TIMP-1 value in the blood serum was determined by the enzyme immunoassay.
Results. MMP-9 and TIMP-1 growth in the blood serum of women with a history of miscarriage was established in the pre-gravidar period. The most significant increase in the parameters of the intercellular matrix was found in patients with non-alcoholic steatohepatitis. MMP-9 and TIMP-1 increased in in blood serum in the first trimester in women with liver diseases. MMP-9 increased against the background of a decrease in the TIMP-1 activity in patients with the threat of premature pregnancy termination. Miscarriage was diagnosed in patients with a minimum value of a tissue inhibitor.
Conclusions. There is an imbalance between MMP-9 and TIMP-1 in the blood serum in women with early miscarriage and chronic diseases of the hepatobiliary system. MMP-9 and TIMP-1 level in patients with hepatic steatosis is lower than in patients with non-alcoholic steatohepatitis. MMP-9 increased during physiological pregnancy, and the TIMP-1 activity practically did not change, which indicates the role of MMP-9 in the initial stages of placentation. MMP-9 value in women with a burdened premorbid background with a physiological course of pregnancy and threatening early spontaneous miscarriage was significantly different. The highest activity of MMP-9 was in women with the threat of spontaneous miscarriage in the early stages. TIMP-1 in the first trimester in women with chronic liver disease increased in those with a favorable course of pregnancy and decreased in the threat of spontaneous miscarriage. Such changes in MMP-9 and TIMP-1 in patients with miscarriage indicate the accumulation of intercellular matrix and sclerotic changes in the vessels that provide blood to the uterus.

sentence: Despite potency maintaining conditions, hypoxic stress forces irreversible mouse trophoblast stem cell differentiation to giant cells following an albeit extendable reversible period. ABSTRACT Hypoxic, hyperosmotic, and genotoxic stress slow mouse trophoblast stem cell (mTSC) proliferation, decrease potency/stemness and increase differentiation. Previous reports suggest a period of reversibility in stress-induced mTSC differentiation. Here we show that hypoxic stress at 0.5% O 2 decreased potency factor protein by ~60-90% and reduced growth to nil. Hypoxia caused a 35-fold increase in apoptosis at Day 3 and a 2-fold increase at Day 6 above baseline. The baseline apoptosis rate was only 0.3%. Total protein was never less than baseline during hypoxic treatment, suggesting 0.5% O 2 is a robust, non-morbid stressor. Hypoxic stress induced ~50% of trophoblast giant cell (TGC) differentiation with a simultaneous 5-to 6-fold increase in the TGC product antiluteolytic prolactin family 3, subfamily d, member 1 (PRL3D1), despite the presence of fibroblast growth factor 4 (FGF4). Hypoxia-induced TGC differentiation was also supported by potency and differentiation mRNA marker analysis. FGF4 removal at 20% O 2 committed cell fate towards irreversible differentiation at 2 days, with similar TGC percentages after an additional 3 days of culture under potency conditions when FGF4 was re-added or under differentiation conditions without FGF4. However, hypoxic stress required 4 days to irreversibly differentiate cells. Runted stem cell growth, forced differentiation of fewer cells, and irreversible differentiation limit total available stem cell population. Were mTSCs to respond to stress in a similar mode in vivo, miscarriage may occur as a result, which should be tested in the future.