August 1, 2007 (Insidermedicine) One of the things that pregnant mothers worry about the most is being able to carry their babies to full term. This is because premature babies have a higher chance of having to stay in hosiptal and of being sick.

But new research published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that a medicine may be able to stop labor form occuring and may end up with a baby that stays in the womb for a few more weeks or months, giving it more time to fully develop.

Here is what we know about premature babies:

- Being born prematurely is the number one cause of death and handicap in infants, and the highest risk births occur in infants delivered before 34 weeks.
- With improvements in care, more and more premature infants are surviving. However, more lives could be saved by identifying women at high risk for premature delivery and developing ways to prevent this from occurring.

The study was conducted because researchers wanted to know if progesterone, a steroid that helps to maintain pregnancy, reduces the risk of delivering a baby prematurely in high risk women.

One of the ways in which a doctor can detect is labor is starting is to measure the legnth of the cervix- the end of the womans womb. If a woman has a short cervix  she is at much higher risk of giving birth to a premature baby.

To find out if progesterone was useful, the researchers identified over 400 women who were pregnant and had a short cervix. Roughly half were given progesterone  from 24 to 34 weeks of pregnancy and the remainder were given an inactive substance or placebo.

They found that treatment with progesterone lowers the risk of premature delivery by 44%, and no serious side effects were noted.

While the results of the study look promising for women with a short cervix who are at risk of delivering prematurely, more research is needed to determine the long-term safety of progesterone treatment on both the mother and the baby.

If you are pregnant, there are things that you can do to lower the chances that your baby will be born prematurely. For instance, smoking, drinking and bladder all raise the risk of delivering a baby prematurely. So you should do the best you can to have a healthy pregnacy. This should inlude seeing your doctor regularly during your pregnancy. If you have early contractions, you may be going into preterm labor and you should seek immediate medical attention.

For Insidermedicine in Depth, I'm Dr. Susan Sharma.