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Birth experience in newborn infants is associated with changes in nociceptive sensitivity

Kasser, S; Hartley, C; Rickenbacher, H; Klarer, N; Depoorter, A; Datta, AN; Cobo, MM; ... Wellmann, S; + view all (2019) Birth experience in newborn infants is associated with changes in nociceptive sensitivity. Scientific Reports , 9 , Article 4117. 10.1038/s41598-019-40650-2. Green open access

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Abstract

Vaginal birth prepares the fetus for postnatal life. It confers respiratory, cardiovascular and homeostatic advantages to the newborn infant compared with elective cesarean section, and is reported to provide neonatal analgesia. We hypothesize that infants born by vaginal delivery will show lower noxious-evoked brain activity a few hours after birth compared to those born by elective cesarean section. In the first few hours of neonatal life, we record electrophysiological measures of noxious-evoked brain activity following the application of a mildly noxious experimental stimulus in 41 infants born by either vaginal delivery or by elective cesarean section. We demonstrate that noxious-evoked brain activity is related to the mode of delivery and significantly lower in infants born by vaginal delivery compared with those born by elective cesarean section. Furthermore, we found that the magnitude of noxious-evoked brain activity is inversely correlated with fetal copeptin production, a surrogate marker of vasopressin, and dependent on the experience of birth-related distress. This suggests that nociceptive sensitivity in the first few hours of postnatal life is influenced by birth experience and endogenous hormonal production.

Type: Article
Title: Birth experience in newborn infants is associated with changes in nociceptive sensitivity
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-40650-2
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-40650-2
Language: English
Additional information: Open Access: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Culture, Communication and Media
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10073007
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