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 ...
ArticlesThe Danger of Ignorance: Improving Patient Education to Save WomenPosted in Health Information on December 05, 2012 by Administrator Vision Grant Researcher Reports Successful Methodology to Study Placental ProteinsPosted in Research on September 30, 2012 by Administrator Principal Investigator Nihar R. Nayak, DVM, PhD, Stanford University, recently reported successful progress in his efforts to better understand the role of certain placental proteins in the development of preeclampsia. His 2011 Vision Grant research project aimed to see how proteins act in the placenta during preeclampsia. In Nayak's multi-stage investigation, he first needed to develop a new method using a mouse model system to study the roles of specific proteins in placental function and disease, as well as testing novel therapeutic approaches to preeclampsia. In his model, protein expressions can be seen in all stages of pregnancy. Going for the Research GoldPosted in Research on August 05, 2012 by Administrator Every two years, the International Society for the Study of Hypertension in Pregnancy (ISSHP) World Congress brings together the top researchers and clinicians in the field of hypertension in pregnancy to share innovations and encourage collaborations in research and clinical practice. As in year's past, the Preeclampsia Foundation participated in the 2012 meeting held July 9-12 in Geneva, Switzerland. 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 ... Could Preeclampsia Affect Your Brain?Posted in Research on April 04, 2012 by Administrator At the Society for Gynecologic Investigation (SGI) Annual Scientific Meeting in San Diego, Calif., in March, the Preeclampsia Foundation, in collaboration with lead authors Dr. Ineke Postma, Dr. Gerda Zeeman, Dr H. Groen of the University Medical Center Groningen, the Netherlands, and Dr. Thomas Easterling of the University of Washington, presented a poster on cognition, quality of life and social functioning after a hypertensive pregnancy. Many formerly preeclamptic women report difficulties with memory or word choice postpartum, but so do many women with normal pregnancy courses. The unanswered question: what is the likelihood that preeclampsia causes brain changes independent of pregnancy itself? If there are preeclampsia-specific changes, can those be separated from the trauma of a medical crisis? 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.
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
Research Roundup: November 2010Posted 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 ... Advances in Research: Screening TestPosted in Research on May 04, 2010 by Administrator
Blood pressure cuffs, urine dipsticks, and the scale: for decades, these simple tools have aided health care providers in the detection of preeclampsia. As a woman's pregnancy progresses, her prenatal visits come closer together, so that her weight gain, urine, and blood pressure readings can be monitored for signs of the disorder. However, this system isn't perfect. While preeclampsia most frequently occurs at term, it can sometimes strike much earlier. The disorder can sometimes progress rapidly between appointments, or the warning signs can be too subtle to trigger alarm. But soon, clinicians may have another method for detecting preeclampsia: a reliable screening test that can spot changes in the bloodstream relatively early in pregnancy, warning healthcare providers when preeclampsia may occur before term. In the past eight years, a substantial amount ... |
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