Nandini Raghuraman, MD, and Antonina Frolova, MD, PhD, assistant professors of obstetrics and gynecology at WashU Medicine, have received a $2.7 million grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study contractions during labor induction — a medical intervention used to initiate childbirth.
Every year, more than 1 million pregnant patients in the U.S. receive a synthetic version of the hormone oxytocin to start and strengthen contractions during labor. But the procedure suffers from a high failure rate, in part because pinpointing the right dose of oxytocin to achieve effective progression of labor is challenging. The researchers aim to study 605 patients undergoing labor induction to understand how the uterus contracts in response to synthetic oxytocin. Their findings may help titrate oxytocin to a dose that can more effectively and safely induce labor.
