Articles
When we think about maternal deaths, visions of thin, malnourished women lying on cots in thatched-roof cots immediately come to mind, when in fact they occur right in our backyard. In the U.S., preeclampsia is one of the four most common reasons for maternal death. On an average, there is approximately 1 maternal death for every 100,000 births, but for African American women, this number triples. African American women are three times more likely to die from preeclampsia and other childbirth-related issues and no one knows why.
As our society becomes more culturally diverse, this problem will indirectly affect all of us. Our daughters and granddaughters may no longer look like us ethnically but carry genes that places them at risks for complications associated with a particular race. While we attempt to unravel the mystery of what causes preeclampsia, an equally mystifying dilemma is to determine why are African American women more at risk for developing and then dying ...
Posted in Health Information on December 05, 2012 by Administrator
By Dr. Anne Wallis ~ Who remembers the first season ER episode "Love's Labours Lost"? The answer: pretty much anyone who ever watched ER! In the episode, a pregnant woman presents to the emergency room with a complaint of bladder problems, has a seizure and later dies. This was my first exposure to the hypertensive disorders of pregnancy. Eclampsia is, thankfully, rare, but it carries a high case fatality rate for the mother and/or the infant. Gestational hypertension and preeclampsia are far more common, affecting between 5% and 8% of all pregnancies in the US. Moreover, these conditions are on the rise and globally, these conditions are a leading cause of maternal and infant illness and death.
Obstetric providers are acutely aware of the dangers of preeclampsia because of its potential severity and rapidity of onset and progression, making high-quality prenatal ...
Related posts: Awareness, intervention, patient_education, protocols, research, study, patient_support, maternal_morbidity, maternal_mortality, health_care_providers, statistics, empowered_patient
 Shelly Bridgewater was 25 years young when she died in 2005 from preeclampsia. Her best friend, Bree Housley, wrote a book about their unlikely friendship and the impact Shelly, "the social butterfly," had on her life. We Hope You Like this Song launches this week and is available in our Marketplace. We talked with Housley about inspiration, Karaoke, and how the Preeclampsia Foundation helped her healing.
What inspired you and your sister to embark on your yearlong tribute to Shelly ...
A recent study in the September 2012 issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology took a look at the seasonal flu vaccine, recognizing that many women are concerned (check out our forum posts about it, here and here) about introducing any drugs or vaccinations during pregnancy.
During the 5-year study period, over 10,000 women received the seasonal influenza vaccine while they were pregnant, a few ...
Posted in Research on August 02, 2012 by Caryn
The hypertensive complications of pregnancy are divided into four distinct classifications: Preeclampsia/eclampsia, Chronic hypertension, preeclampsia superimposed on chronic hypertension, and gestational hypertension. Many people are perplexed by the term "superimposed preeclampsia" which is preeclampsia complicating hypertension of another cause, most commonly chronic or "essential" hypertension. However women with hypertension associated with ...
Related posts: intervention, genes, diagnostics, research, study, maternal_morbidity, maternal_mortality, health_care_providers, heart_disease, hypertension, long_term_impact
Posted in Heard on the Hill on July 02, 2012 by Administrator
Last week, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as the "health reform law." This means that implementation of this landmark legislation can continue to move forward. However, the law continues to be the subject of debate through this year's presidential and congressional election cycle, and depending on the election results could be altered by Congress and the White House in the future. As it currently stands, the law directly benefits childbearing women and newborns by:
- prohibiting the use of pregnancy as a preexisting condition by health insurance providers;
- widening access to certified nurse-midwives by eliminating inequities in how they are reimbursed under Medicare;
- paying for home visits by nurses for at-risk families during or after ...
That was my goal with the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity I was given to present one of three President's Program lectures at the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists' Annual Clinical Meeting.
"Patient Perspectives on Preeclampsia" - or as I joked, "lessons from this side of the stirrups" - was well-received by the standing-room-only crowd in the main auditorium of the San Diego Convention Center. More importantly, the many comments I received after the lecture satisfied me that I achieved my objective - to reach their hearts with compelling, real-life stories illustrating the impact preeclampsia has on mothers, fathers, and babies; and to reach their minds by inspiring clinical practice behaviors that include educating each and every expectant mother with non-alarmist, but sound information about the ...
Related posts: ppd, ptsd, neurocognitive, long_term_impact, mental_health, empowered_patient, hypertension, outreach, mission, continuing_education, conferences, health_care_providers, maternal_mortality, maternal_morbidity, patient_support, research, protocols, patient_education
May and Mother's Day are so intertwined that it's hard to think about one without the other, especially here at the Preeclampsia Foundation, where we've built a nationwide campaign at www.promisewalk.org/campaign to get the word out about preeclampsia - the "thing" that for many survivors turned our entrance into motherhood into a nightmare.
I believe celebrating mothers is a commemoration of extremes. Not just because preeclampsia is an extreme condition, but because the mothers I am ...
Related posts: Awareness, intervention, patient_education, diagnostics, protocols, patient_support, maternal_death_rate, maternal_morbidity, maternal_mortality, health_care_providers, continuum_of_care, conferences, continuing_education, mission, outreach, empowered_patient
Posted in Research on March 01, 2012 by Caryn
Is there a nutritional connection to preeclampsia? That idea seems plausible at first, as when the blood samples of women have been analyzed, some researchers have found altered levels of various vitamins and minerals. Furthermore, preeclamptic women have altered patterns of weight gain during pregnancy; and obese women are more likely to develop preeclampsia.
Such considerations may lead one to speculate that certain diets may prevent or reverse the disease, in which case the appropriate diet becomes a therapeutic intervention. However the best research to date suggests this just isn't so.
Related posts: intervention, genetic_testing, genes, diagnostics, protocols, research, study, maternal_death_rate, maternal_morbidity, maternal_mortality, supplements, empowered_patient
Posted in Research on December 04, 2011 by Caryn
Currently there's no way to know for certain whether preeclampsia will develop during any given pregnancy. This leaves pregnant women and their care providers with little choice but to wait for symptoms to appear... dangerous symptoms that mean the disease has progressed to the point where mother and baby are critically ill and will need intensive monitoring and carefully timed delivery to protect their health and lives. The only screening method to date is to measure those symptoms when they appear.
Early detection wouldn't be a treatment. But what if a screening test could let us know, weeks or even months in advance, that we'd probably be getting ill? Knowing might change the way we seek care - possibly choosing specialist care providers with the education and experience to manage medically complicated pregnancies. Women in parts of the world (like
Related posts: genetic_testing, intervention, genes, diagnostics, protocols, research, research_alliances, study, maternal_death_rate, maternal_morbidity, maternal_mortality, health_care_providers, continuing_education, statistics
The end of the year always brings with it the joys and blessings (and sometimes challenges) of the holiday season, the nostalgia of closing out another year, and the enthusiasm of looking forward to a new year of anticipated goals. For the Preeclampsia Foundation, as we close out 2010, we close the door on our first decade as THE patient advocacy organization fighting to end the devastating impact of preeclampsia. It has been a very full ten years, beginning with the tumultuous first steps of any start-up organization and moving into the more recent years of growth and success. Last month, we published “Preeclampsia: A Decade of Perspective | Building a Global Call to Action”. This 40-page publication captured our milestones as we celebrated our 10th anniversary, reported on the state of preeclampsia, and suggested a call-to-action for ...
 When Jaime Nolan lost her premature baby, Grace Ann, she was determined not to let the meaning of her life end there.
Born at 27 weeks after Jaime’s sudden onset of severe preeclampsia, Grace only survived eight days while her mother fought for her life in the intensive care unit. When Grace went into cardiac arrest, Joe Nolan watched the doctor standing over his daughter’s incubator, performing chest compressions with his thumb.
Jaime discovered the Preeclampsia Foundation online and found a network of support that helped her work through her grief. Determined to take action and help prevent others from enduring such a painful loss, she found out the Foundation needed to develop an annual fundraiser.
Jaime gathered a local group of volunteers and chaired what she thought would be a one-time gala in Minneapolis. At the same time ...
Posted in Research on November 18, 2010 by Administrator
Several major disorders that occur during pregnancy result from failure of the placenta to implant correctly into the uterus or womb. During early pregnancy cells from the placenta, known as trophoblast cells, invade into the uterus and tap into the mother’s blood supply to sustain the growing baby. Failure of this process can lead to insufficient supply of blood to the placenta resulting in preeclampsia, as well as low birth weight babies, stillbirth or recurrent miscarriage.
The invading placental trophoblast cells intermingle with maternal immune cells in the uterine lining. Trophoblast express not only maternal but also paternal genes and these will be different or “foreign” to the mother. Maternal immune cells can recognize these “foreign” fetal molecules and are thought to regulate the implantation process, allowing sufficient but not excessive invasion of the placenta. In the preeclamptic pregnancy this interactive process goes wrong and there is ...
In April, a New York Times article cited a study from the medical journal The Lancet that indicated for the first time in decades, researchers are seeing a significant drop worldwide in the number of women dying each year from pregnancy and childbirth, to about 342,900 in 2008 from 526,300 in 1980.
Several reasons were noted for the improvement: lower pregnancy rates in some countries; higher income, which improves nutrition and access to health ...
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