Gestational alloimmune liver disease is the commonest identified cause of liver failure in newborn babies: the mother's immune system makes antibodies that cross the placenta and injure the baby's developing liver before birth. It is rare and serious, but it can be treated after birth and largely…

Intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy is a liver condition of late pregnancy that causes intense itching and, more importantly, raises the level of substances called bile acids in a mother's blood. Those bile acids reach the baby, and when the level is high the pregnancy carries a greater chance of…

Most newborn jaundice is harmless and passes within a week or two, but a small group of babies turn yellow early, stay yellow longer, or need more treatment than expected — and in many of those babies the reason is something they inherited. Four studies published in 2026 in Thailand, Malaysia, and…

A cleft is a gap left where parts of a baby's face did not join during early pregnancy, and it can involve the lip, the roof of the mouth — the palate — or both. Pregnancy scans find a cleft lip easily but rarely find a cleft palate, and the palate is the part that decides whether a newborn can…

Oropouche virus is an insect-borne infection spreading through South America and the Caribbean that was long considered a mild week-long fever. Four laboratory studies published in 2026 show that it can cross the placenta and damage the cells that build a baby's brain. Here is what that research…

Europe's largest recorded outbreak of parvovirus B19 — the "slapped cheek" virus — swept through 2023 and 2024, and four studies published in 2025 now show what it meant for pregnancy. The reassuring finding is that the virus does not appear to have become more dangerous. The demanding one is that…

If you are pregnant and living with hepatitis C, or you have recently had a baby and you have the virus, the advice about testing your child has changed. For decades, families were told to wait until their child turned 18 months old. Now a single blood test taken somewhere between two and six…

Pre-eclampsia is a pregnancy complication that can force a baby to be born weeks earlier than planned, and a daily low-dose aspirin tablet started early in pregnancy is the one treatment shown to push that moment later. Four studies published in 2025 and 2026 looked at who gets offered that tablet…

Doctors have known for fifty years that alcohol during pregnancy can harm a developing baby. What they still cannot do reliably is work out which babies were affected, because the only routine test is to ask the mother — and many women who did drink say that they did not. Four studies published in…

A sacrococcygeal teratoma is a tumour that grows at the base of a baby's spine before birth. It is the most common tumour found in newborn babies, it is almost always non-cancerous, and most babies who have one go on to do well after surgery to remove it. Four studies published between April 2025…

Total anomalous pulmonary venous connection is a rare heart difference in which the veins carrying oxygen-rich blood back from the lungs join the wrong side of the heart. Surgery can repair it, but babies do far better when it is found on an ultrasound scan before birth — and it is one of the…

Transposition of the great arteries is a heart condition present at birth in which the two main arteries leaving the heart are connected the wrong way round. Surgery to correct it is now very successful, and most children grow up well. Four recent studies look at the part that is still hard: the…