Scientists Search For Causes Of Preterm Birth And Better Ways To Test For Risk

In 1998, 25 weeks into her pregnancy, Sara Arey's cervix dilated and her amniotic sac started to descend into the birth canal. She was rushed to a hospital an hour and a half away from her home near Hickory, N.C., where she stayed for more than a week before her baby was born via emergency C-section. The baby, a girl, died 12 hours later in the hospital.

Arey had already had two prior miscarriages and one preterm birth in 1994. Had she been able to take a test for her risk of preterm birth, she says that she would have. She would have liked to have known her risk as early as possible, she says.

"When you're pregnant, you're at the most vulnerable point of your life," she says. "You feel this joy of this being, but also enormous responsibility."

Unfortunately for mothers in her situation, there's currently no reliable way of predicting preterm birth risk. Yet nearly 1 out of 10 babies born in the U.S. were born premature (before 37 weeks) in 2016, and, according to , that rate rose slightly between 2014 and 2016 after a decade