• Question: Roughly, how long will this take to find out what causes pregnant women to go into labour when they do?

    Asked by dixons to Gemma on 13 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by lemnell.
    • Photo: Gemma Sharp

      Gemma Sharp answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Thanks for the question. It’s really good (and difficult to answer!)

      Well, my whole lab is working on answering this question, and there are other labs around the world doing the same. Unfortunately, scientists have been studying this for years and we *still* don’t know.

      We can find things that are involved (eg towards the end of pregnancy, a hormone called Progesterone doesn’t work as well as it did throughout pregnancy, so it looks like that may be involved in triggering labour), but there are lots of things involved, and we can’t pinpoint just one thing that’s most important.

      Because there are so many different factors involved in making a pregnant woman go into labour when she does, it’s possible that we might *never* know the precise mechanism.

      Sounds depressing right? Well, sometimes it can be, but the fact that we’re finding out all the different things involved is good anyway. We should still be able to find a drug that will be able to prevent premature birth even if we don’t fully understand labour. We’ve already got drugs that work in some women, but unfortunately they don’t always work in all women, so we need to keep searching.

      So I guess the answer is, it could take forever to find out what causes pregnant women to go into labour when they do, but hopefully it won’t! My PhD lasts three years, but I’ll probably continue to study child birth even when I finish my PhD… if my lab let me stay on! 🙂

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