Secular changes in human fetuses normally aborted in years 1965-1985.

Abstract

The authors disposed of numerous cases of fetuses normally aborted during the long period of time therefore the studies of time dependent variability of some somatotropic features in relation to the degree of development were decided. The studies on the fetal material should be always performed with great care as many errors could be introduced. Some of them are related to not enough accurate determination of the fetal age and the variability of the causes of abortion. These would result the inconsistency of stages of fetal development among the material used for the study. Therefore the research was performed using only the fetuses with accurate estimated calendar age and of similar environmental conditions for development. The causes of the abortion were related only to external factors but not to the course of pregnancy. For the analysis only the fetuses of 5th and 6th month of fetal age were used. All fetuses were aborted in the years 1965, 1970, 1975, 1980, 1985. The intersexual differences were also taken into consideration and calculated means of the features were related to identical points of the fetal age. The variations in the seating body length (v-tub), the head perimeter, the shoulder width (a-a) and the body weight were analysed in such individualised groups.