Submitted:
13 August 2022
Posted:
15 August 2022
You are already at the latest version
Abstract
Preterm birth is a leading cause of infant morbidity and mortality in the world. In 2020, 1 in 10 infants were born prematurely in the United States. Globally, the World Health Or-ganization estimates 15 million infants are born prematurely. The efficacy of current ther-apeutic interventions for preterm birth have been called into question due to limited repli-cable success. Recent advancements in the field of nanomedicine have made it possible to utilize the vaginal administration route to effectively and locally deliver drugs to the fe-male reproductive tract. Also, studies using murine models have provided important in-sights about the cervix as a gatekeeper for pregnancy and parturition. It seems plausible that the field of reproductive biology is on the cusp of a paradigm shift in the context of treating preterm birth. The present review focuses on the complexities associated with treating the condition and novel therapeutics that have produced promising results in pre-clinical studies.
Keywords:
vaginal administration
; preterm birth
; progesterone
; cervical ripening
; uterine first-pass effect
; vaginal nanoformulation
Copyright: This open access article is published under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license, which permit the free download, distribution, and reuse, provided that the author and preprint are cited in any reuse.
