New app helps doctors predict the risk of premature birth

A new app developed by researchers at King’s College London (UK) can help doctors identify women at risk of giving birth prematurely. The application, called QUiPP, was tested in two studies of pregnant women considered at high risk of preterm birth.

Doctors usually consider patient histories of preterm birth when establishing the risk of premature birth in pregnant women. Additional factors include the length of the cervix and levels of a biomarker found in vaginal fluid known as fetal fibronectin. Fibronectin level is usually tested at 23 weeks’ gestation, and can signal an anomaly in embryonic development if too low at the beginning of pregnancy.

A new app, called QUiPP, developed by a team of researchers at King’s College London (UK), uses an algorithm to combine information about the gestation times of previous pregnancies, the length of the cervix and the level of fetal fibronectin. This data is cross-referenced by the app in the aim of providing a more accurate evaluation of the risk of preterm birth (birth before 37 weeks).

Researchers tested the reliability of the app in two separate studies, published in the Ultrasound in Obstetrics Gynecology journal. The first study looked at 1,249 pregnant women considered at high risk of premature birth due to previous preterm births, but with no symptoms. The second studied 382 high-risk pregnant women and evaluated the probability of delivery before the 30th, 34th or 37th week of gestation in relation to their levels of fibronectin.

The results showed that the study’s authors were able to estimate premature delivery more effectively with the app than when considering each factor alone.

Professor Andrew Shennan, the study’s lead author and Professor of Obstetrics at King’s College, said that, “The more accurately we can predict her risk, the better we can manage a woman’s pregnancy to ensure the safest possible birth for her and her baby, only intervening when necessary to admit these ‘higher risk’ women to hospital, prescribe steroids or offer other treatments to try to prevent an early birth.”

The study’s authors now hope to carry out further work to evaluate the app clinically and determine whether interventions can improve pregnancy outcomes for women flagged up as high risk by the app.

The QUiPP app is available to download free of charge from the Apple store.

Worldwide, 15 million babies are born prematurely each year (before 37 weeks’ gestation), and over a million of these die from complications linked to preterm birth.

• Personal Finance – Career Education
• Pregnancy
• King’s College London
• preterm birth
• pregnant women