• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.52 no.11
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• pp.1228-1233
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• 2009

Purpose : This study aimed to evaluate whether a shorter time from the arrival at a hospital to delivery is related to the occurrence of cerebral palsy in premature infants of less than 34 weeks of gestational age. Methods : We studied 142 newborns of less than 34 weeks of gestational age. The time from the arrival at the hospital to delivery was measured. The correlation between the time required for delivery and the occurrence of cerebral palsy was elucidated by diagnosing cerebral palsy in neonates using the Korean Infant Development Screening Test and neurological examination. Results : Preliminary result suggested that a shorter time from hospital arrival to delivery was related to a lower development score for gross motor activity and to a higher frequency of cerebral palsy occurrence. Moreover, it was responsible for a tendency of obtaining lower Apgar scores at 1 and 5 minutes. The shorter delivery time was associated with a higher probability of respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) occurrence when the length of delivery time was less than 6 hours and there was a higher probability of a shorter gestation period. However, the multifactor analysis revealed that there was little impact of delivery time on the occurrence of cerebral palsy. Conclusions : The length of hospital arrival time to delivery did not significantly influence the occurrence of cerebral palsy in premature infants of less than 34 weeks of gestational age.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.942-948
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• 2006

This study was performed to determine whether the length of the feeding of the controlled experimental diet to the dam resulted in changes to the dam milk or pup brain fatty acid composition. As a first method, females have been obtained at 3 weeks of age and fed the experimental diet throughout their growth to adulthood including mating, pregnancy, and lactational periods. As a second method, in order to shorten this long and expensive process, time-pregnant dams were obtained as early as possible from a commercial supplier, on day 3 of gestation, and immediately switched to the experimental diet. At birth, the milk of dams prepared by these two different methods was compared by collecting the stomach contents of the pups. This showed a slight increase in docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and arachidonic acid (AA) in the pup stomach contents from the time-pregnant dams. There were no significant changes in the brain fatty acid composition of pups between the two different lengths of the experimental diet intake. By the 10 days of age, there were only minor differences in the milk fatty acid composition of pup stomach contents from the two sets of dams. However, the pup brains of the time-pregnant groups at 10 days showed increased AA and DHA due to intake of the chow diet including AA, DHA and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA). Thus, the history of the maternal feeding could affect the results under these particular circumstances, but the differences were minimal.