Gannett News Service article by Lorraine Ash:

Dr. Jason Colins believes he may have a key to solving what he calls
"The last great mystery of obstetrics."

He has transformed a portion of his OB/GYN practice in Slidell, LA, into
the nonprofit Pregnancy Institute and, at his own expense, tried to
solve
the mystery of stillbirths due to cord complications.

His paper, "The Human Umbilical Cord," was published in June by the
Placenta Study Group 2000 of the Royal College of Obstetricians and
Gynecologists.

Collins studied 300 mothers whose children were stillborn at an average
of 38 weeks because of umbilical cord complications.  All the fetuses
had died, he noted, while their mothers slept.

"A possible explanation is maternal blood pressure declining during
sleep," he said, adding that about 4000 of the 26,000 stillbirths that
happen each year could be related to the blood flow interruption that
occurs during the sleep cycle.

His findings excite him.  He is eager to save babies.  But who is
listening?

Some mothers who have lost children to cord accidents are, but they
do not have the wherewithal to inject his ideas into the world of
medicine for further scrutiny and possible application.  There is no
centralized stillbirth institute to report to, no clearinghouse of
information on the topic.

So he sits in Louisiana, trying to drum up support among colleagues.

The scenario is typical in the field of stillbirth.  A lone man strikes
out, funds his own research (Collins is aided only by the sale of a
Southern Cookbook), makes some strides and nothing happens.

"What I have discovered is the equivalent of falling over New Zealand,"
he said.  "We've missed this completely, and how did that happen?  Why
is it a man with a solo practice, a non-academic doctor in Slidell, LA
can see it?"

Some pioneers such as himself have been motivated in their studies by
a personal loss, but not Collins.  The tragedy hasn't hit his family.
"But it hit my psyche," he said "I've been delivering babies for 20
years
and I've had this happen several times, and I'm not one to let it pass
by
me."

When he delved into textbooks, though, he mostly found a new arena of
biology few had touched.  He found a paper published in the Journal of
the American Medical Association in 1978 by Harvard researchers who
reported a three-fold increase in the deaths of babies whose mother's
blood pressure was below 100 over 70.

Collins built on that idea and his own observations, looking for
patterns
and coming up with the nighttime sleep connection.   But it would seen,
he said, that hardly anyone else has referred to the findings since they
were published.

The Internet is leading him to allies, but more dollars and attention
are needed if the work is to be studied further and applied.

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