(Press-News.org) Researchers at the University of Warwick and UHCW have discovered how body clock genes could affect women's ability to have children.
The study, by medics at Warwick Medical School and University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire (UHCW) NHS Trust, pinpoints how body clock genes are temporarily switched off in the lining of the womb to allow an embryo to implant. Timing of this event is critical for pregnancy.
The researchers examined endometrial cells from womb linings of healthy women, and also biopsies from women who had sadly suffered from recurrent pregnancy loss.
The study has found that women suffering from recurrent miscarriages may be less able to regulate clock genes in the lining of the womb.
Published in the Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), the study also provides new insights into how night and shift work could affect female fertility.
It is hoped that by identifying the causes behind recurrent miscarriages, that fertility experts will be able to help more prospective parents than ever before.
It could have major implications for IVF, as the findings suggest that fertility specialists could, in future, target bio-rhythms in the womb to improve the environment for implanted embryos.
Professor Jan Brosens, Consultant in Reproductive Health at Warwick Medical School and UHCW NHS Trust said: "Infertility affects one in six women across the world, but the area of body clock genes has not been looked at in this detail before.
"It's crucial during pregnancy that mothers and their babies' embryos are able to synchronise. If this fails to happen, it can cause miscarriage. However, it can also increase the risk of complications in later stages of pregnancy such as pre-eclampsia, fetal growth restriction and pre-term birth.
Professor Siobhan Quenby, Consultant Obstetrician at Warwick Medical School and UHCW NHS Trust said: "We believe our study has huge implications in the understanding of the body clock genes and their effect on female fertility.
"We hope that it will increase worldwide knowledge about possible reasons for infertility and recurrent miscarriages, so that we are able to help families achieve their dream of having children."
INFORMATION:
Notes to editors
The full paper, 'The Clock Protein Period 2 Synchronizes Mitotic Expansion and Decidual Transformation of Human Endometrial Stromal Cells' has been published in the April edition of the FASEB journal, and is available here: http://www.fasebj.org/content/29/4/1603.abstract
Infertility affects one in six couples across the world. Miscarriage is the most common complication of pregnancy. Approximately, one in seven clinical pregnancies result in miscarriage, mostly prior to 12 weeks of pregnancy.
It is estimated that 5% of women experience two clinical miscarriages and approximately 1% three or more losses.
Media contacts:
Kelly Parkes-Harrison, Senior Press and Communications Manager, University of Warwick, 02476 150868, 07824 540863, k.e.parkes@warwick.ac.uk
Sarah Dakin, Communications Manager, University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, 02476 967617
Egg consumption may reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, according to new research from the University of Eastern Finland. The findings were published in American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Type 2 diabetes is becoming increasingly widespread throughout the world. Research has shown that lifestyle habits, such as exercise and nutrition, play a crucial role in the development of the disease. In some studies, high-cholesterol diets have been associated with disturbances in glucose metabolism and risk of type 2 diabetes. In contrast, in some experimental studies, the consumption ...
An illuminating study compares the willingness of stage IV cancer patients, and their caregivers; to pay to extend their lives by one year against that of other end-of-life improvements. The research, led by members of the Lien Centre for Palliative Care (LCPC) and collaborators from the National Cancer Centre Singapore, was recently published in the journal, Palliative Medicine.
Patients with advanced cancer or other life limiting illnesses often have to consider how much money they are willing to spend on high cost treatments that result in only moderate improvements ...
University of Adelaide researchers have shown there are two critical windows during the developmental pathway to adulthood when exposure to junk food is most harmful, particularly for female offspring.
This work leads on from earlier findings which showed that mothers who eat junk food while pregnant are programming their babies to be addicted to a high fat, high sugar diet by the time they are weaned.
Their latest laboratory studies reveal there may be a chance to turn around this junk food addiction in two critical windows--equating to late pregnancy and in adolescence ...
The use of technology in daily life is getting easier all the time as people accumulate knowledge and skills in information and communications technology. However, the most important thing in developing health care services, for example, is to take into account people's day to day lives and their subjective experience of the utility of using services. For example, people's previous bad experience of using a service is reflected for a long time in their use of the service in the future, and thus the dissemination of new service models is a lot slower than might be imagined. ...
DARIEN, IL - A new study suggests that symptoms of depression and insomnia are the strongest predictors of having frequent nightmares.
Results show that 3.9 percent of participants reported having frequent nightmares during the previous 30 days, including 4.8 percent of women and 2.9 percent of men. Frequent nightmares were reported by 28.4 percent of participants with severe depressive symptoms and 17.1 percent of those with frequent insomnia. Further analysis that adjusted for potential confounders found that the strongest independent risk factors for nightmares were ...
Bethesda, MD (April 2, 2015) -- Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), the more severe form of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) that can progress to liver fibrosis and cirrhosis, is associated with leakiness of the intestinal wall, which in turn may worsen liver disease, according to research1 published in Cellular and Molecular Gastroenterology and Hepatology, the new basic science journal of the American Gastroenterological Association.
"Our study strengthens the clinical association between intestinal permeability and NASH, although we were unable to identify ...
Accurate blood pressure measurement (BP) is fundamental to the early diagnosis of hypertensive disorders in pregnancy, says a review published 1 April, 2015, in The Obstetrician & Gynaecologist (TOG).
The diagnosis and management of hypertensive disorders in pregnancy, as well as obstetric haemorrhage, sepsis and safe abortion, are guided in part by the measurement of BP. These conditions contribute to more than half of all maternal deaths globally, so the accuracy of BP measurement is vital, the review concludes.
The review explains that BP monitoring is the most ...
BATON ROUGE - LSU Psychology Professor Megan H. Papesh was part of a research team whose study appeared in the online-first edition of the Journal of Neuroscience on Wednesday, April 1.
The research, jointly conducted by scientists from the Barrow Neurological Institute and Arizona State University, involves recording single-neuron activity in the brains of epilepsy patients who require electrodes implanted to monitor seizures. With the electrodes in place, processes such as perception and memory can be studied at the level of individual neurons.
The research focused ...
As man-made threats to coral reefs mount and interest in conserving reef ecosystems grows, scientists have turned to studying extremely remote and uninhabited reefs in an effort to understand what coral reefs would be like in the absence of humans. A number of islands and atolls in the Pacific Ocean remain virtually untouched by human influence, situated hundreds of kilometers from the nearest human populations.
A study published today by scientists at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa (UHM) School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), the National ...
MADISON, Wis. - Clearing grasslands to make way for biofuels may seem counterproductive, but University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers show in a study today (April 2, 2015) that crops, including the corn and soy commonly used for biofuels, expanded onto 7 million acres of new land in the U.S. over a recent four-year period, replacing millions of acres of grasslands.
The study -- from UW-Madison graduate student Tyler Lark, geography Professor Holly Gibbs, and postdoctoral researcher Meghan Salmon -- is published in the journal Environmental Research Letters and addresses ...
