and abortions adjusted to known or estimated time of parturition (Month 0) are shown in Table 1. In the abortion group, loss of pregnancy was estimated to occur during early (5 of 7, 71%), mid- (1 of 7, 14%), and late (1 of 7, 14%) pregnancy. Hence, there were a limited or nil number of serum samples from month-to-month in the abortion group to accommodate statistical analysis among all groups. Thus, monthly relaxin results were combined to represent
three, 4-month periods as shown in Fig. 3. Regardless of pregnancy status, the significant effect of month was attributed to an increase (P < 0.05) in relaxin concentrations from early to mid-pregnancy for all groups. A subsequent increase (P < 0.05) in concentrations occurred by late pregnancy in the live birth and stillbirth groups but not the abortion group. The significant effects of pregnancy status and status-by-month interaction was primarily due to lower (P < 0.05) relaxin concentrations in the stillbirth and abortion groups by mid-pregnancy and abortion group by late pregnancy compared to the live birth group.