Fetal behavioral states are stable over daytime - evidence by longitudinal and cross-sectional fetal biomagnetic recordings.
OBJECTIVE
Fetal behavioral states can be distinguished by biomagnetic recordings. We performed a longitudinal and a cross-sectional study to address the question whether the distribution of fetal behavioral states changes during the daytime.


METHODS
For the longitudinal study, 32 magnetocardiographic recordings were performed on a singleton pregnancy on a weekly basis. On each examination day, two recordings were performed at different times between 25 and 40 weeks of gestation. For the cross-sectional study, fetal magnetocardiograms (fMCG) were recorded in a group of 32 singleton pregnancies matched for gestational age and daytime to the longitudinal study. The recordings were separated into two gestational age groups (less and more than 32 weeks). Fetal behavioral states were extracted from actocardiograms generated from MCG.


RESULTS
No significant differences in fetal behavioral state distribution were found between morning and afternoon recordings in either the longitudinal or the cross-sectional study.


CONCLUSIONS
This is the first magnetographic approach to show that daytime does not influence the distribution of fetal behavioral states in standardized recordings of 30 min length. This result implies that fetal magnetography recordings at normal daytimes can be combined without a bias and future recordings can be conducted independently of daytime as long as the varying behavioral states are generally taken into account during analysis.
Alessandra
A
Sonanini
Krunoslav
K
Stingl
Hubert
H
Preissl
Johanna
J
Brändle
Markus
M
Hoopmann
Oliver
O
Kagan
Diethelm
D
Wallwiener
Harald
H
Abele
Isabelle
I
Kiefer-Schmidt
D000328:Adult; D001519:Behavior; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D005333:Fetus / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D060306:Magnetometry; D011247:Pregnancy / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult