Hormone Gel Is Said to Reduce Risk of Premature Birth

Hormone Gel Is Said to Reduce Risk of Premature Birth - NYTimes.com: Premature birth is the leading cause of death and illness among newborns. An estimated 12.9 million babies worldwide, 500,000 of them in the United States, are born prematurely every year. In the United States, about a third of early births result from decisions by doctors that the health of either the mother or child is threatened enough to end the pregnancy early, usually with a Caesarean section. But two-thirds of those early births are spontaneous, and any intervention that could reduce them could have significant public health consequences. The hormone treatment, a progesterone gel inserted vaginally every day during the second half of a pregnancy, reduced the risk of premature birth in women with a short cervix, which can soften too early.