What is hypoxia and what does it influence?
Hypoxia is a decrease in the baby’s oxygen. If you had a severe enough decrease in oxygenation during the perinatal period it might give rise to brain injury that might then give rise to neurological deficit in later life. At the far end of the spectrum would be an infant with cerebral palsy. What would cause this lack of oxygen? One of the areas that we’re looking at is compression of the umbilical cord. About 25% of babies are born with the cord around the neck – what we call a nuchal cord – so it’s quite common. Most babies tolerate that very well. But we also have shown that babies who do have the cord around the neck will be lightly smaller and their placentas will be slightly larger. This suggests that some babies might be exposed to an intermittent compression of the umbilical cord through the latter part of pregnancy. That might then impact the infant’s growth and development. What is your research focus? I’m interested in understanding how the brain is affected by intermittent
