The conundrum of intestinal injury in preterm infants receiving mother's own milk.

"Necrotizing enterocolitis" ("NEC") is a heterogeneous group of intestinal injuries experienced primarily in preterm infants. Risk factors include among others preterm gut microbiome alterations. Maternal milk (MM), or otherwise parent milk, is protective for the developing intestine due to its constituents, which include bioactive antimicrobials, immunomodulatory molecules, human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs), secretory immunoglobulin A (sIgA), and microorganisms.

The microbiome in pregnancy and early life-Highlights from the 11th Maria Delivoria-Papadopoulos Perinatal Symposium.

This review was based on a symposium that examined novel aspects of the microbiome during pregnancy and early life and explored papers published by the lecturers. For example, it showed that bacterial extracellular vesicles derived from the microbiome harboured in various maternal niches, carried bacterial deoxyribonucleic acid, were isolated from the placenta and may have confounded placental microbiome studies. Maternal diet was responsible for the composition and diversity of breast milk microbiota, and may have shaped the offspring's microbiome and influenced their immune components.

An Update on Lung Function of Extremely and Very Preterm Infants in Later Life: The Role of Early Nutritional Interventions.

Birth occurring at ≤32 weeks' gestation ("very preterm") or at ≤28 weeks' gestation ("extremely preterm") potentially poses considerable health problems for the neonate, including respiratory sequelae, not only during the immediate newborn period, but throughout childhood and into adulthood. With the progressive improvements in neonatal care, the survival of extremely preterm and very preterm neonates has improved substantially. However, a considerable percentage of these infants suffer dysfunctions that may trigger, at some stage later in life, the onset of respiratory morbidities.

Advanced parental age affects cardiometabolic risk in offspring.

Advanced age at conception usually refers to human mothers aged 35 years plus and fathers aged 40 years plus. Advanced parental age may be responsible for genetic and/or epigenetic alterations and may affect the health of offspring. Limited epidemiological and experimental studies have addressed the effect of advanced parental age on cardio-metabolic functions in human and rodent offspring.

Breastfeeding provides a protective hug and the benefits have outweighed the risks during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mothers have been very hesitant about breastfeeding when they have COVID-19 infection or vaccinations. Maternal milk protects neonates through its high biological value, immune factors and anti-infectious molecules and this review shows that the virus that causes COVID-19 is not transmitted through breast milk. COVID-19 vaccines induce anti-spike antibodies with neutralising capacity, and phagocytosis, and no vaccine particles or messenger ribonucleic acid have been detected in breast milk.

Clinical outcome in newborns of perinatally COVID-19 infected women.

Objective: Maternal COVID-19 infection during pregnancy has been associated with adverse neonatal outcomes, such as prematurity and neonatal morbidity. Those adverse events are mainly attributed to maternal factors, rather than to the neonatal infection itself. Our aim is to add our experience and present the neonatal outcome of neonates born to mothers with perinatal SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Action is needed to tackle the clinical, psychological and socioeconomic impact of perinatal COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic has turned perinatal healthcare into a worldwide public health challenge. Although initial data did not demonstrate pregnancy as a more susceptible period to adverse outcomes of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection, an increasing number of reports now certify maternal illness as a high-risk condition for the development of maternal-fetal complications. Despite the rarity of SARS-CoV-2 vertical transmission, severe maternal illness might induce adverse perinatal and neonatal outcomes.

Embryo Quality May Be Associated With Serum Inhibin B Levels but Not With Serum or Follicular Fluid Levels of Other Components of the Activin-Follistatin-Inhibin Axis.

Objective: We investigated the potential associations of embryo quality with serum and/or follicular fluid (FF) concentrations of the molecules of the activin-follistatin-inhibin (AFI) axis and antimüllerian hormone and aimed to identify molecules that could predict a positive assisted reproductive technology (ART) outcome.

Methods: In this cross-sectional study, we measured AFI hormone and antimüllerian hormone levels in the serum and FF of follicles (n = 101) obtained from healthy oocyte donors who underwent an assisted reproductive technology course (n = 32). After egg retrieval, embryos were characterized as good or bad quality according to the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology criteria.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the "Plague of Athens": comparable features 25 centuries apart.

Motivated by the up to now disastrous outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic, we attempted a flashback to the so-called "Plague of Athens," which indicated a serious contagious disease, having taken place between 430 and 426 BC. The ancient pandemic was meticulously described by the Athenian historian and general Thucydides. We compared, as much as possible, the following parameters: background conditions, spreading of the pandemics, preceded and concurrent adverse events, duration and waves of the pandemics, symptoms, implicated infectious agents/diseases and mental/psychosocial consequences.

Clinical symptoms associated with laboratory findings and placental histopathology in full-term, non-infected neonates born to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) positive mothers.

This study comprehensively examines clinical symptoms, laboratory findings, and placental pathology in 40 cases of singleton full-term SARS-CoV-2 negative neonates. Their mothers, previously healthy, with uncomplicated pregnancies, were infected peripartum and presented COVID-19 symptoms of various severity. Neonates had predominately diarrhea, the yet unreported absent sucking reflex, elevated COVID-19 inflammatory and ischemia/asphyxia markers as serum ferritin, interleukin-6 and cardiac troponin-T, while placentas demonstrated mild vascular and/or inflammatory lesions.

The jury is still out on the existence of a placental microbiome.

The human microbiome is crucial for regulating normal development, but the exact point when it is established remains unknown. A sterile placenta was traditionally considered a prerequisite for a healthy pregnancy, but studies have revealed that the placenta harbours microbial communities, even under normal conditions. However, reports have failed to provide evidence for the consistent presence of bacteria in the normal human placenta, challenging the in utero colonisation hypothesis.

Early human milk lactoferrin during SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Background/aim: Early human milk provides protection against viral infections due to its high nutritional value, abundance of maternal antibodies and the specific role of lactoferrin (Lf). Lf blocks the early interaction between SARS-CoV-2 and host cells by binding to specific cell receptors and has been proposed as a preventative and adjunct treatment for COVID-19. This preliminary report aimed to investigate concentrations of Lf in early milk of SARS-CoV-2 positive mothers versus non-infected controls.

Adipokines and Metabolic Regulators in Human and Experimental Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension.

Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is associated with meta-inflammation related to obesity but the role of adipose tissue in PH pathogenesis is unknown. We hypothesized that adipose tissue-derived metabolic regulators are altered in human and experimental PH. We measured circulating levels of fatty acid binding protein 4 (FABP-4), fibroblast growth factor -21 (FGF-21), adiponectin, and the mRNA levels of FABP-4, FGF-21, and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ (PPARγ) in lung tissue of patients with idiopathic PH and healthy controls.

Equity in coronavirus disease 2019 vaccine development and deployment.

The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic exposed weaknesses in multiple domains and widened gender-based inequalities across the world. It also stimulated extraordinary scientific achievement by bringing vaccines to the public in less than a year. In this article, we discuss the implications of current vaccination guidance for pregnant and lactating women, if their exclusion from the first wave of vaccine trials was justified, and if a change in the current vaccine development pathway is necessary.