OBJECTIVES To investigate the hypothesis that reduced resting tissue blood flow precedes the clinical onset of pre-eclampsia in women at risk of the disease. METHODS We used venous occlusion plethysmography to compare resting calf muscle blood flow in 18 normal pregnant controls, 18 pregnant women with chronic hypertension, and 23 pregnant women at increased risk of developing pre-eclampsia. ...

OBJECTIVE To determine the ultrastructural changes of the placenta in women with pre-eclampsia and eclampsia compared to the placenta of normotensive patients. STUDY DESIGN Comparative descriptive study. PLACE AND DURATION OF STUDY Obstetrics Unit of North Colombo Teaching Hospital, Ragama, Sri Lanka in 2004. METHODOLOGY Placentae of 10 normotensive women and 10 hypertensive women with pr...

The aim of this study is to prospectively assess pregnancy hormone levels as correlates of subsequent development of pre-eclampsia, a condition that has been shown to be inversely associated with breast cancer risk in the offspring. A cohort of 260 Caucasian women in Boston, Massachusetts, was followed through pregnancy. Maternal blood was collected at the 16th and 27th weeks of gestation, and ...

Pre-eclampsia is a pregnancy-specific hypertensive disorder that may lead to serious maternal and fetal complications. It is a multisystem disease that is commonly, but not always, accompanied by proteinuria. Its cause(s) remain unknown, and delivery remains the only definitive treatment. It is increasingly recognized that many pathophysiological processes contribute to this syndrome, with diff...

This study investigated the frequency of apolipoprotein E (apoE) alleles among women with severe pre-eclampsia. The presence of the three most common apoE alleles (epsilon 2, epsilon 3, epsilon 4) was determined by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism in three groups of white women: non-pregnant healthy (n = 101), pregnant healthy (n = 52), and pregnant with a diag...

PURPOSE OF REVIEW The aim of the study is to perform a critical assessment of in vitro models of pre-eclampsia using complementary human and cell line-based studies. Molecular mechanisms involved in spiral uterine artery (SUA) remodelling and trophoblast functionality will also be discussed. RECENT FINDINGS A number of proteins and microRNAs have been implicated as key in SUA remodelling, whi...

Objectives. To study the efficacy of vitamin E supplementation for the reduction of preterm birth/low birthweight newborns in pre-eclamptic pregnant women. Design. Comparison of the rate of preterm birth and low birthweight in pre-eclamptic pregnant women with or without vitamin E treatment. Setting. Hungarian Case-Control Surveillance System of Congenital Abnormalities, 1980-1996. Population. ...

BACKGROUND There are data to suggest that infection with HIV or use of highly active antiretroviral therapy increases the risk of hypertensive disorders in pregnancy. This systematic review and meta-analysis aims to provide an overview of the research hitherto. METHODS A systematic review of EMBASE, PubMed, and The Cochrane Library databases was conducted to obtain articles about the associat...

BACKGROUND Pre-eclampsia is a syndrome of heterogeneous origin characterized by deficient placentation due to the inability of the cytotrophoblast to acquire an invasive phenotype and to remodel the uterine spiral arteries. One of the main problems observed early in pre-eclampsia is an altered regulation of the immune system, where the shift toward a Th2 cytokine profile observed in normal preg...

BACKGROUND To study whether maternal serum hyperglycosylated human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG-h) improves first trimester prediction of pre-eclampsia when combined with placental growth factor (PlGF), pregnancy-associated plasma protein-A (PAPP-A) and maternal risk factors. METHODS Gestational-age-adjusted concentrations of hCG, hCG-h, PlGF and PAPP-A were analysed in serum samples by time-r...