About the Authors

Jane E. Norman

jane.norman@ed.ac.uk

Affiliation University of Edinburgh Centre for Reproductive Biology, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Carole Morris

Affiliation Information Services Division, NHS National Services Scotland, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

James Chalmers

Affiliation Information Services Division, NHS National Services Scotland, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Competing Interests

JN has received grants from government (Medical Research Council, UK; Chief Scientist's Office, Scottish Executive) and charitable organisations for research into understanding the mechanism of term and preterm labour and investigating treatments (charities currently include Tommy's, Piggy Bank Kids, and Action Medical Research, and formerly include Wellbeing of Women), has acted as a consultant to a small drug company (Preglem, Geneva) that was considering developing treatments for preterm labour, and is named as an inventor on patent applications for a compound (a prokineticin antagonist) potentially useful in preterm labour prevention. CM and JC have read this journal's policy and have no competing interests.

Author Contributions

ICMJE criteria for authorship read and met: JEN CM JC. Agree with the manuscript's results and conclusions: JEN CM JC. Designed the experiments/the study: JEN JC. Analyzed the data: JEN CM. Wrote the first draft of the paper: JEN. Contributed to the writing of the paper: JEN CM JC.