Premature births could be prevented by a drug that fights inflammation, Adelaide University researchers say

Premature births have been entirely prevented in mice with the use of a drug that switches off inflammatory pathways, according to Adelaide researchers, looking to solve the problem in pregnant women.

The team from the University of Adelaide’s Robinson Institute, has been studying the inflammatory mechanisms that lead to pre-term births and how they can be suppressed.

They used plus-naloxone, a drug known to switch off pro-inflammatory pathways, and found they were able to entirely prevent premature birth in pregnant mice.

They also saw infant fatalities were significantly reduced, and the low birth-weight normally associated with pre-term birth was also reversed.

“The babies born to mothers treated with plus-naloxone developed normally and were mostly indistinguishable from those born to the control group,” lead author and Institute director Professor Sarah Robertson said.

The researchers described the results as showing “early promise”.

“Not only did we prevent them being born too soon, we prevented stillbirth and the foetal growth restriction that would otherwise have occurred,” Professor Robertson said.

“[It’s] unusual to find a single molecule in biology that has such a potent effect.”

They said the main causes of premature birth in humans — including bacterial infection, physical injury, placental damage, carrying twins or triplets, or environmental toxins — cause an “inflammatory cascade”.

They said that can activate an immune response in women who will then be unable to carry the baby beyond 37 weeks of pregnancy.

“The exciting thing is that these drugs have already been tested in people with infections,” Professor Robertson said.

“Prospects for bringing them to human use are close but it will be several years I guess before we can have the confidence to test them in women who are pregnant.”

Current treatments often too late

The Institute tested the theory that if the immune response could be blocked, it might prevent premature births.

“Our studies give us some encouragement that it may be possible to prevent many pre-term births, by using drugs that target the body’s inflammatory mechanisms, probably in combination with antibiotics as well,” Professor Robertson said.

She said while other drugs are currently in use to help prevent premature births, they are used at much later stages of pregnancy.

“By the time the conditions for pre-term birth have already arisen, it’s often too late for current treatments to do anything about it,” she said.

The Robinson Institute said being born premature was the major cause of death in children under five, accounting for 1.1 million deaths annually.

That represents 12 per cent of all births worldwide.

The study’s findings have been published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports.

This post originally appeared on ABC News.