The trimester-specific association of prenatal dietary patterns with intrauterine fetal growth and neonatal birth size is unclear. We evaluated the trimester-specific association of prenatal dietary patterns with intrauterine fetal growth and neonatal birth size. A prospective pre-birth cohort study included 1,857 mother-neonate pairs in China. Food frequency questionnaires were used to assess the maternal diet across three trimesters. we used generalized estimating equation models to examine the longitudinal associations of prenatal dietary patterns with intrauterine fetal growth and neonatal birth size. In addition, we used multinomial logistic regression models and multivariable linear regression models to estimate the trimester-specific associations. 5.0

Objective: To investigate the effects of two different ventilation methods on ventilation function in preterm infants with respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) during the recovery period. Methods: 100 preterm infants with respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit of our hospital from January 2022 to January 2025 were selected as the study subjects. According to the random number table method, they were divided into high-frequency oscillatory ventilation combined with volume guarantee (HFOV-VG) group (50 cases) and conventional mechanical ventilation (CMV) group (50 cases). Compare the invasive mechanical ventilation time and total respiratory support time, arterial blood gas analysis results [arterial oxygen partial pressure (PaO₂), carbon dioxide partial pressure (PaCO₂), inspired oxygen fraction (FiO₂)], and the occurrence of adverse reactions between the two groups. Results: Both invasive mechanical ventilation time and total respiratory support time in HFOV-VG group were shorter than those in CMV group (P<0.05). The PaO₂ levels in the HFOV-VG group at 6h, 12h, and 24h were all lower than those in the CMV group (P<0.05). The PaCO₂ levels in the HFOV-VG group at 6h, 12h, and 24h were all lower than those in the CMV group (P<0.05). The FiO₂ levels in the HFOV-VG group at 30 minutes, 6 hours, 12 hours, and 24 hours were all lower than those in the CMV group (P<0.05). The incidence of hypocapnia, bronchopulmonary dysplasia, and intraventricular hemorrhage in the HFOV-VG group was significantly lower than that in the CMV group (P<0.05), and there was no difference in the incidence of other complications (P>0.05), but there was a tendency to decrease in the HFOV-VG group. Conclusion: HFOV-VG demonstrated significant advantages compared with CMV in the management of ventilatory function during the recovery period of RDS in preterm infants, including shortening ventilation time, improving oxygenation, and reducing the incidence of key complications.

Following the publication of this paper, it was drawn to the Editor's attention by a concerned reader that certain of the flow cytometric assay data shown in Fig. 2C and 3C on p. 2817 and p. 2818 respectively were strikingly similar to data that had already been submitted for publication in a paper written by different authors at a different research institute. Owing to the fact that the contentious data in the above article were already under consideration for publication prior to its submission to Molecular Medicine Reports, the Editor has decided that this paper should be retracted from the Journal. The authors were asked for an explanation to account for these concerns, but the Editorial Office did not receive a reply. The Editor apologizes to the readership for any inconvenience caused. [Molecular Medicine Reports 20: 2812‑2822, 2019; DOI: 10.3892/mmr.2019.10490].

A growing body of evidence demonstrates that androgens play crucial roles in female reproductive physiology. Androgen receptor (AR) expression appears at all levels of the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis and other female reproductive organ or tissue such as uterus, placenta and immune system. Via AR-mediated mechanisms, androgens regulate key reproductive processes including follicular development, embryo implantation, placental formation, and pregnancy maintenance. AR knockout models suffer from considerable reproductive defects characterized by defective follicular development, reduced ovulation, decreased fertility, even premature ovarian failure. Clinically, low maternal serum testosterone correlates with diminished ovarian reserve and adverse pregnancy outcomes. These findings establish that a critical threshold of androgen is essential for successful pregnancy. While androgen excess has long been associated with follicular dysfunction and endometrial abnormalities leading to infertility and miscarriage, emerging evidence indicates that insufficient androgen similarly compromise female reproductive function. This review synthesizes fundamental discoveries and clinical evidence elucidating androgen's multifaceted effects on female reproduction. Collectively, we underscore the physiological significance of optimal androgen signaling and the pathological consequences from androgen deficiency across reproductive process.

Background Antepartum depression has been reported to be associated with the intensity of maternal prenatal noise exposure; however, the association between noise exposure duration and the development of antepartum depression has not been established. This study aimed to determine the total and trimester-specific association of prenatal noise exposure duration with the development of antepartum depression. Methods From May 2018 to June 2021, we recruited 2,166 pregnant women from Shengjing Hospital, northeast China. We used a standardized questionnaire to assess women’s prenatal noise exposure and used the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale to assess pregnant women’s antepartum depression during the 1st -, 2nd -, and 3rd - trimesters. We calculated a cumulative noise exposure score ranging from 0 to 3, with a higher score reflecting higher frequency and longer duration of noise exposure during pregnancy. Results Women who were exposed to noise for ≥ 15 min per day had an increased risk of antepartum depression compared with women who were not exposed to noise during pregnancy [odds ratio (OR) = 1.83, 95%CI:1.18, 2.83]. Noise exposure in a specific trimester was associated with higher risk of depression in the same trimester and subsequent trimesters. We observed increases in antepartum depression risk with increasing cumulative noise exposure scores ( P for trend < 0.05 for all). Pregnant women with the highest scores had the highest risk of antepartum depression during the first (OR = 1.30, 95%CI:1.02, 1.65), second (OR = 1.75, 95%CI:1.23, 2.50) trimesters. Women with a cumulative noise exposure score of 2 had the highest risk of antepartum depression during the third trimester (OR = 1.79, 95%CI:1.14, 2.80), as well as during the whole pregnancy (OR = 1.94, 95%CI:1.14, 3.30). Conclusions Maternal prenatal noise exposure duration was positively associated with antepartum depression risk in a dose-response manner. It is necessary to develop strategies by which pregnant women can avoid excessive exposure to noise to prevent antepartum depression.

Background Previous observational cohort studies have shown that the composition of the gut microbiota is related to the risk of intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy (ICP), although it is unclear if the association is causative. This study used Mendelian randomization (MR) to systematically examine whether the gut microbiota was causally linked to ICP. Methods We obtained the genome-wide association study (GWAS) summary statistics of gut microbiota and ICP from published GWASs. Maximum likelihood (ML), MR-Egger regression, weighted median, inverse variance weighted (IVW), and weighted model were used to investigate the causal association between gut microbiota and ICP. We further conducted a series of sensitivity analyses to confirm the robustness of the primary results of the MR analyses. Reverse MR analysis was performed on the bacterial taxa that were reported to be causally linked to ICP risk in forwarding MR analysis to evaluate the possibility of reverse causation. Results MR analysis revealed that phylum Tenericutes (OR: 1.670, 95%CI: 1.073–2.598, P = 0.023), class Bacteroidia (OR: 1.644, 95%CI: 1.031–2.622, P = 0.037), class Mollicutes (OR: 1.670, 95%CI: 1.073–2.598, P = 0.023), and order Bacteroidales (OR: 1.644, 95%CI: 1.031–2.622, P = 0.037), and were positively associated with the risk of ICP. And we identified that the relative abundance of genus Dialister (OR: 0.562, 95%CI: 0.323–0.977, P = 0.041), genus Erysipelatoclostridium (OR: 0.695, 95%CI: 0.490–0.987, P = 0.042), genus Eubacterium ( brachy group ) (OR: 0.661, 95%CI: 0.497–0.880, P = 0.005), genus Eubacterium ( hallii group ) (OR: 0.664, 95%CI: 0.451–0.977, P = 0.037), genus Holdemania (OR: 0.590, 95%CI: 0.414–0.840, P = 0.003), genus Ruminococcus ( torques group ) (OR: 0.448, 95%CI: 0.235–0.854, P = 0.015), and genus Veillonella (OR: 0.513, 95%CI: 0.294–0.893, P = 0.018) were related to a lower risk of ICP. Additional sensitivity analyses confirmed the robustness of the association between specific gut microbiota composition and ICP. No evidence of reverse causality from ICP to identified bacterial taxa was found in the findings of the reverse MR analyses. Conclusions Under MR assumptions, our findings propose new evidence of the relationship between gut microbiota and ICP risk. Our results show that the gut microbiota may be useful target of intervention for ICP.

ObjectiveThe causal relationship between early life adiposity and gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) and the underlying mechanisms remains unclear. This study aimed to investigate the independent causal association between early life adiposity and GDM and identify potential metabolic mediators and their mediating effects on this relationship.MethodsUsing genome-wide association study (GWAS) summary statistics from the publicly available database of early life adiposity (5,530 cases and 8,318 controls) and GDM (11,279 cases and 179,600 controls), a two-step, two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) was conducted to estimate the causal mediation effects of lipidomic biomarkers including low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), triglyceride, apolipoprotein A-Ι, and apolipoprotein B on the relationship between early life adiposity and GDM.ResultsGenetically predicted childhood adiposity was positively associated with risk of GDM (OR: 1.21, 95%CI: 1.09–1.34, p = 4.58 × 10−4). This causal relationship remained after accounting for adult adiposity traits in the multivariable MR analyses. Two-step MR identified three candidate mediators that partially mediated the effect of early life adiposity on GDM, including HDL-C (5.81, 95%CI: 3.05–8.57%), apolipoprotein A-Ι (4.16, 95%CI: 1.64–6.69%), and triglyceride (2.20, 95%CI: 0.48–3.92%).ConclusionThis MR study demonstrated that the causal effect of childhood obesity on future GDM risk was independent of adult adiposity. We identified three mediators, including HDL-C, apolipoprotein A-Ι, and triglyceride, in this association pathway. Our results provide insights into the pathogenesis of GDM and suggest additional prevention and treatment targets for GDM related to early life adiposity.

The trimester-specific associations of maternal dietary patterns with preterm birth (PTB) are unclear. In a prospective prebirth cohort study, we aimed to examine the critical time window of maternal prenatal dietary patterns and the risk of PTB. We assessed prenatal dietary intake among 1500 pregnant women with validated food frequency questionnaires during the 1st, 2nd and 3rd trimester, respectively. We used logistic regression models and generalized estimating equation models to examine the trimester-specific associations and longitudinal associations between maternal dietary patterns in relation to risk of PTB and PTB subtypes. The incidence rate of PTB was 11.9% (179 out of 1500 pregnant women) in the present study. We observed that maternal adherence to a fish-seafood pattern in the 1st trimester was associated with higher risk of PTB [tertile 3 (T3) vs. tertile 1 (T1): OR = 2.29, 95% CI: 1.32-3.96] and iatrogenic preterm birth (IPTB) (T3 vs. T1: OR = 2.26, 95% CI: 1.21-4.20), while a fish-seafood pattern in the 2nd trimester was associated with lower risk of PTB (T3 vs. T1: OR = 0.49, 95% CI: 0.25-0.93). Maternal adherence to a dairy-egg pattern in the 2nd or 3rd trimester was associated with higher risks of PTB and IPTB. No dietary patterns were associated with spontaneous preterm birth. Our findings provide new evidence that specific dietary patterns during different trimesters may have different and even inverse health effects on pregnant women. This supports the necessity of guiding the maternal diet according to different periods of pregnancy to prevent PTB.

Growing evidence indicates that gut microbiota could be closely associated with a variety of adverse pregnancy outcomes (APOs), but a causal link between gut microbiome and APOs has yet to be established. Therefore, in this study, we comprehensively investigated the relationship between gut microbiota and APOs to identify specific causal bacteria that may be associated with the development and occurrence of APOs by conducting a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis. The microbiome genome-wide association study (GWAS) from the MiBioGen consortium was used as exposure data, and the GWAS for six common APOs was used as outcome data. Single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that significantly correlated to exposure, data obtained from published GWAS, were selected as instrumental variables (IVs). We used the inverse variance-weighted (IVW) test as the main MR analysis to estimate the causal relationship. The Mendelian randomization pleiotropy residual sum and outlier (MR-PRESSO) and MR-Egger regression were used to confirm the presence of horizontal pleiotropy and to exclude outlier SNPs. We performed Cochran's Q test to assess the heterogeneity among SNPs associated with each bacterium. The leave-one-out sensitivity analysis was used to evaluate whether the overall estimates were affected by a single SNP. Our analysis shows a causal association between specific gut microbiota and APOs. Our findings offer novel insights into the gut microbiota-mediated development mechanism of APOs.

Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Syndrome (TTTS) is a severe complication of monochorionic twin pregnancies. Fetoscopy laser photocoagulation is a widely adopted procedure for treating TTTS. In the process of fetoscopic laser photocoagulation of placental anastomoses, the limited field of vision of fetoscopy and low visibility in amniotic fluid environment will lead to inaccurate recognition of placental vessels, hinder photocoagulation, and prolong the surgery time. In this paper, we propose a novel transformer for placental vessels segmentation to help doctors quickly and accurately identify abnormal vascular anastomoses and monitor ablation status. The proposed model combines convolutional neural network (CNN) and transformer to capture long-distance information and local detail information. Compared with other methods on FetReg challenge Dataset, the segmentation performance of the proposed model reaches the state-of-the-art level. In addition, the model we designed has great application value due to its efficiency, lightweight and convenient deployment.

Fetal head circumference (HC) is an important biological index in prenatal ultrasound screening. In the clinic, fetal HC is usually measured manually by sonographers in two dimensional (2D) ultrasound images. The manual method is significantly affected by the inter/intra-observer difference and the process of manual measurement is inconvenient and time-consuming for sonographers. Although several artificial intelligence (AI) approaches had been applied to fetal HC measurement, they had weak generalization ability, especially for the incomplete or blurred skull edge. In this study, a fast and accurate method for fetal HC auto-measurement was proposed. Different from the common region segmentation method, an end-to-end convolutional neural network (CNN) for fetal skull boundary segmentation in 2D ultrasound images is proposed, which is an efficient method to directly segment the boundary of fetal skull by using the proposed double-branch structure. The segmentation results can be directly used to calculate fetal HC without complex post-processing. The proposed approach achieved excellent results: Mean Dice Sore (MDS)+/- std: 97.98 +/- 1.30, Mean Hausdorff Distance (MHD)+/- std: 1.20 +/- 0.68 mm, Mean Absolute Difference (MAD)+/- std: 1.75 +/- 1.60 mm, Mean Difference (MD)+/- std: 0.08 +/- 2.37 mm. Additionally, we drew a Bland-Altman plot to demonstrate that HC measured by the proposed approach has high agreement with the real value. Comprehensive results show that the proposed approach is comparable to the state-of-the-art methods for fetal HC measurement. Meanwhile, our approach belongs to a lightweight network with less parameters, which is convenient for deployment. We hope it could provide help for precision medicine in prenatal ultrasound screening.

The literature on maternal dietary patterns and gestational hypertension (GH) risk is largely ambiguous. We investigated the associations of maternal dietary patterns with GH risk among 1092 pregnant women in a Chinese pre-birth cohort. We used both three-day food diaries (TFD) and food frequency questionnaires (FFQ) to assess the diets of pregnant women. Principal components analysis with varimax rotation was used to identify dietary patterns from the TFD and FFQ, respectively. In total, 14.5% of the participants were diagnosed with GH. Maternal adherence to a “Wheaten food–coarse cereals pattern (TFD)” was associated with a lower risk of GH (quartile 3 [Q3] vs. Q1, odds ratio [OR] = 0.53, 95%CI: 0.31, 0.90). Maternal adherence to a “Sweet food–seafood pattern (TFD)” was associated with lower systolic blood pressure (Q4 vs. Q1, β = −2.57, 95%CI: −4.19, −0.96), and mean arterial pressure (Q4 vs. Q1, β = −1.54, 95%CI: −2.70, −0.38). The protective associations of the “Sweet food-seafood (TFD)” and “Fish–seafood pattern (FFQ)” with the risk of GH were more pronounced among women who were overweight/obese before pregnancy (p for interaction < 0.05 for all). The findings may help to develop interventions and better identify target populations for hypertension prevention during pregnancy.

Abstract Background Neu–Laxova syndrome (NLS) is an autosomal recessive genetic disease characterized by a variety of congenital malformations. It is a fatal developmental disorder caused by homozygous or compound heterozygous mutations in PHGDH, PSAT1, and PSPH. Method In this study, we aimed to characterize the clinical and molecular features of a fetus with NLS caused by novel heterozygous missense variants in PHGDH that were identified in his non-consanguineous parents. The fetus showed severe intrauterine growth restriction and abnormal ultrasound signs at 28 weeks of gestation. Fetal muscular tissue and peripheral blood samples from both parents were collected for whole-exome sequencing and Sanger sequencing. Results The clinical features were consistent with a diagnosis of NLS. Three missense mutations were detected in PHGDH in the fetus: c.488G > A(p.Arg163Gln) was carried by the father and c.607A > T(p.Ile203Phe) and c.743C > T (p.Ala248Val) were carried by the mother, resulting in a compound heterozygous mutation. Clinvar database suggests that c.743C > T may be benign variation, So we speculate that c.607A > T(p.Ile203Phe) is the pathogenic site carried by the mother. Conclusions This is the first report of PHGDH mutations in a patient with NLS in Northeast China. Thus, we detected a novel compound heterozygous pathogenic mutation in PHGDH, thereby expanding the molecular and phenotypic spectrum and providing strong support for the contribution of PHGDH to the pathogenesis of NLS.

Fetal head circumference (HC) is an important biological parameter to monitor the healthy development of the fetus. Since there are some HC measurement errors that affected by the skill and experience of the sonographers, a rapid, accurate and automatic measurement for fetal HC in prenatal ultrasound is of great significance. We proposed a new one-stage network for rotating elliptic object detection based on anchor-free method, which is also an end-to-end network for fetal HC auto-measurement that no need for any post-processing. The network structure used simple transformer structure combined with convolutional neural network (CNN) for a lightweight design, meanwhile, made full use of powerful global feature extraction ability of transformer and local feature extraction ability of CNN to extract continuous and complete skull edge information. The two complement each other for promoting detection precision of fetal HC without significantly increasing the amount of computation. In order to reduce the large variation of intersection over union (IOU) in rotating elliptic object detection caused by slight angle deviation, we used soft stage-wise regression (SSR) strategy for angle regression and added KLD that is approximate to IOU loss into total loss function. The proposed method achieved good results on the HC18 dataset to prove its effectiveness. This study is expected to help less experienced sonographers, provide help for precision medicine, and relieve the shortage of sonographers for prenatal ultrasound in worldwide.

Antenatal depression is associated with adverse birth and long-term outcomes for mothers and children. Pregnant women spend 90% of time indoors; however, the association between indoor air quality and risk of antenatal depression has not been established. In this study, we aim to determine the total and trimester-specific association of perceived indoor air quality (PIAQ) with antenatal depression. A total of 2166 pregnant women were enrolled during the first trimester and evaluated during the second and third trimesters in the China Medical University Birth Cohort Study, a prospective pre-birth cohort study in northeastern China. PIAQ scores were obtained during each of three trimesters, which a higher score indicated a worse indoor air quality. Antenatal depression was screened using an Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) and defined as an EPDS score ≥ 9. Prevalence of antenatal depression was 26.7%, 20.6%, and 20.9% during the first, second, and third trimesters, respectively. A higher PIAQ score was positively associated with a depression score throughout pregnancy (β = 0.27, 95% CI = 0.15-0.39). Trimester-specific adverse PIAQ exposure was associated with a higher depression score in the same trimester, but not with a higher score in a subsequent trimester. A dose-response pattern and incremental increases in risk of depression were observed with calculated adverse PIAQ exposures across all three trimesters, with the highest risk (OR = 3.24; 95% CI = 2.28-4.78) among women with adverse PIAQ across all three trimesters. The hazardous association between adverse PIAQ exposure and risk of depression were less pronounced among women with higher physical activity levels (P for interaction < 0.001). The results of present study provided important evidence that pregnant women's mental health was linked to indoor air quality during pregnancy. These findings could be helpful in the development of guidelines to prevent antenatal depression by improving indoor air quality.

近年来,随着二孩政策的放开及辅助生殖技术的广泛应用,双胎妊娠的发生率逐年上升.随之而来的双胎妊娠带来的母儿并发症及远期生活质量等相关问题逐渐显现.在我国,早产作为双胎妊娠的最主要并发症,其发生率约占双胎妊娠的58.71％[1],明显高于单胎妊娠,已成为临床中亟待解决的问题之一.

The nutrients and other factors transported by umbilical cord blood, which is vital for fetal survival, play crucial roles in fetal development. There are various communication modes between the fetal-placental system and the maternal-placental system, and these communication modes are all mediated by umbilical cord blood. During the process of umbilical cord blood transportation, the changes of some nutrients and factors may play a key role in fetal development. Exosomes, which are members of the extracellular vesicle family, are present in the umbilical cord blood and play roles in information transmission as a result of their efficient cellular communication activity. The study of umbilical cord blood-derived exosomes provides a new approach for research on the etiology of maternal–fetal diseases and they may be useful for the development of intrauterine treatments. This review summarizes specific functions and research directions regarding umbilical cord blood-derived exosomes, and their potential associations with pregnancy complications.

Objective This study aimed to identify various perinatal maternal characteristics that contributed to neonatal asphyxia (NA) in term and late-preterm newborns based on the data obtained from a Chinese birth registry cohort and to establish an effective model for predicting a high risk of asphyxia. Method We retrospectively reviewed and analyzed the birth database from July 1, 2016, to June 30, 2017, in the main economically developed regions of China. Asphyxia was defined as an Apgar score <7 at 5 min post-delivery with umbilical cord arterial blood pH < 7.2 in the infant born after 34weeks. We compared the perinatal maternal characteristics of the newborns who developed asphyxia (NA group, n = 1,152) and those who did not (no NA group, n = 86,393). Candidate predictors of NA were analyzed using multivariable logistic regression. Subsequently, a prediction model was developed and validated by an independent test group. Result Of the maternal characteristics, duration of PROM ≥ 48 h, a gestational week at birth <37, prolonged duration of labor, hypertensive disorder, nuchal cord, and birth weight <2,500 or ≥4,000 g, abnormal fetal heart rate, meconium-stained amniotic fluid, and placenta previa were included in the predicting model, which presented a good performance in external validation (c-statistic of 0.731). Conclusion Our model relied heavily on clinical predictors that may be determined before or during birth, and pregnant women at high risk of NA might be recognized earlier in pregnancy and childbirth using this methodology, allowing them to avoid being neglected and delayed. Future studies should be conducted to assess its usefulness.

Objective: To clarify the role of microRNA-193a-3p (miR-193a-3p) in the pathogenesis of placenta accreta spectrum. Methods: The placental tissue expression levels of miR-193a-3p and Ephrin-B2 (EFNB2) were compared between a placenta accreta spectrum group and a control group. Transwell migration and invasion assays were used to verify the effect of miR-193a-3p and EFNB2 on HTR-8/SVneo cells cultured in human endometrial stromal cell (hESC)-conditioned medium. Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT)-related proteins were examined by western blotting to establish whether the EMT pathway was altered in placenta accreta spectrum. To determine whether EFNB2 is a target gene of miR-193a-3p, luciferase activity assays were performed. Results: miR-193a-3p was upregulated but EFNB2 downregulated in the placenta accreta spectrum group and EFNB2 was a direct target of miR-193a-3p. Overexpression or inhibition of miR-193a-3p revealed that miR-193a-3p promoted the migration and invasion of HTR-8/SVneo cells cultured in hESC-conditioned medium. Furthermore, EMT was induced, as shown by increased N-cadherin, vimentin, MMP2, and MMP9 and decreased E-cadherin in the placenta accreta spectrum group and in HTR-8/SVneo cells transfected with miR-193a-3p mimics or si-EFNB2. The negative effect of miR-193a-3p inhibitor was reversed by co-transfection with si-EFNB2 in function studies and in analyses of EMT-related proteins in vitro . Conclusion: miR-193a-3p which upregulated in placenta accreta spectrum group increases HTR-8/SVneo cell migration and invasion by targeting EFNB2 via the EMT pathway under decidua defect conditions to lead to placenta accreta spectrum.

Background Prenatal diagnosis of coarctation of the aorta (CoA) is challenging for most examiners. The malformation often occurs at the aortic isthmus, which is a short segment between the origin of the left subclavian artery and the insertion of the ductus. We report herein a rare case of CoA with a long, angled, and hypoplastic isthmus. The echocardiographic characteristics and postmortem findings are presented to approach the skill of fetal diagnosis. Case presentation A pregnant women undergone fetal echocardiography at 26 + 3 gestational weeks in our center. Conventional two-dimensional echocardiography (2DE) showed that ascending aorta went straight upward branching three brachiocephalic arteries without the appearance of the arch, suggesting the possibility of an interrupted aortic arch. Three-dimensional echocardiography (3DE) using spatiotemporal image correlation (STIC) and high-definition flow imaging technique was performed to obtain the 3D rendered images, which clearly showed the arch and its angled junction with the slim isthmus in space. Intra-uterine fetal death occurred and an autopsy was performed. The gross findings showed the angled hypoplastic aortic isthmus in detail and thus confirmed the prenatal diagnosis. Conclusions Traditional 2DE may be limited in showing the angled hypoplastic aortic isthmus, while the 3DE STIC technique can provide additional spatial information to show great arteries in detail, help to find tiny vessels, and thus benefit the examiners to make an accurate diagnosis.