Amniotic-Fluid Cortisol and Human Fetal Lung Maturation

Abstract

Recent studies suggest that cortisol plays an important part in fetal lung maturation. Lower cortisol levels were found in umbilical-cord blood of infants in whom the respiratory-distress syndrome developed than in normal infants of comparable gestational age,¹ suggesting a physiologic link between endogenous fetal cortisol production and maturation of the fetal lung. With a radiotransinassay specific for unconjugated cortisol it was shown that after an initial rise in amniotic-fluid cortisol around the 20th week of gestation, there is a plateau until at least 35 weeks, followed by a rapid rise, particularly in the two weeks before the onset of spontaneous . . .