A new study by researchers at UTMB is the first to show that premature aging of the placenta due to oxidative stress is the cause of many preterm births. The study appears this week in the American Journal of Pathology. Researchers took fetal membranes, exposed them to oxidative stress in a lab setting (specifically cigarette smoke extract) and examined whether it caused rapid aging of the placental tissue. It did. “This is the first study to look at and prove that oxidative stress induces senescence, or aging, in human fetal cells," said Dr. Ramkumar Menon, an assistant professor in the UTMB Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and lead researcher on the study. “With more than 15 million pregnancies worldwide ending in preterm births, we can now move forward in discovering how this information may lead to better intervention strategies to reduce the risk of preterm birth.” The news also appears in Medical Xpress, redOrbit, Health Canal and Science World Report.