(Press-News.org) Despite being the subject of increasing interest for a whole century, how preeclampsia develops has been unclear - until now.
Researchers believe that they have now found a primary cause of preeclampsia.
"We've found a missing piece to the puzzle. Cholesterol crystals are the key and we're the first to bring this to light," says researcher Gabriela Silva.
Silva works at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's (NTNU) Centre of Molecular Inflammation Research (CEMIR), a Centre of Excellence, where she is part of a research group for inflammation in pregnancy led by Professor Ann-Charlotte Iversen.
The findings are good news for the approximately three per cent of pregnant women in Norway who get this disease. Worldwide, preeclampsia is a leading cause of illness and death in both mother and foetus.
In a preeclamptic pregnancy, the placenta does not develop properly, and the baby sometimes also receives too little nutrition.
The symptoms of preeclampsia are often mild, but in some cases the condition becomes so severe that the baby needs to be delivered prematurely.
Preeclampsia does not disappear until the baby is born. Since no one has understood why the condition occurs, the current treatment is to monitor and alleviate the symptoms.
Silva believes that future treatment will now become more effective.
"A pregnancy is actually a kind of natural inflammatory condition, and in the case of preeclampsia, the inflammation has become too strong and leads to disease," Silva says.
Women who have had preeclampsia have an increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease later in life.
It was precisely this connection that led the researchers to choose to examine cholesterol in pregnant women with preeclampsia. Cholesterol is a major cause of cardiovascular disease.
Cholesterol crystals are found in plaque that clogs blood vessels. The crystals are formed when bad cholesterol accumulates in the blood vessel walls. Studies have shown that cholesterol crystals are a particularly powerful initiator of inflammation in the body and can cause the blood to clot.
Cholesterol crystals are identified as harmful substances in the body that need to be cleared out. But the defence cells that come in to do the job aren't able to break them down. They call for reinforcements, and more immune cells come in, to no avail. The immune response runs wild, and the inflammatory process escalates.
Silva found that the inflammation was at its highest in the region called the maternal-foetal interface, where the mother's cells come into direct contact with foetal cells. This happens in the placenta and uterine wall.
"This direct contact means that the inflammation directly affects the communication between mother and foetus and contributes to even greater inflammation in the mother," says Silva.
Cholesterol levels are high in all pregnant women, because both the foetus and the placenta need cholesterol. But levels were even higher in women with preeclampsia. They also had much more of the bad cholesterol, which is the type of cholesterol found in people who are at high risk for cardiovascular disease.
Silva went to great lengths to solve the riddle. She used tissue samples from a biobank that the research group at CEMIR has built up, and included placenta samples from 90 women with preeclampsia obtained immediately after birth. The researchers therefore had tissue samples from both the uterine wall and the placenta. The samples were examined using advanced microscopes.
It has taken years of research to arrive at the result.
Future treatment for preeclampsia may simply include cholesterol-lowering medications, such as statins, but further research is needed to clarify their effects.
"Some women have an increased risk of preeclampsia right from the start. They should be followed up with a cholesterol check. This isn't done regularly today, but it should be done regularly in the future. The use of statins during pregnancy is not recommended now, but several clinical studies are looking more closely at this and are showing that pravastatin, for example, can be safe to use during pregnancy," says Silva.
INFORMATION:
Amsterdam, NL, January 21, 2021 - The bacterial gut microbiome is strongly associated with Parkinson's disease (PD), but no studies had previously investigated he role of fungi in the gut. In this novel study published in the Journal of Parkinson's Disease, a team of investigators at the University of British Columbia examined whether the fungal constituents of the gut microbiome are associated with PD. Their research indicated that gut fungi are not a contributing factor, thereby refuting the need for any potential anti-fungal treatments of the gut in PD patients.
"Several studies conducted since 2014 have characterized changes in the gut microbiome," explained lead investigator Silke Appel-Cresswell, MD, Pacific Parkinson's Research Centre and Djavad ...
The cause of the inflammatory lung disease sarcoidosis is unknown. In a new study, researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have investigated whether a type of immune cell called a monocyte could be a key player in sarcoidosis pathogenesis and explain why some patients develop more severe and chronic disease than others. The study, which is published in The European Respiratory Journal, opens new possibilities for future diagnostic and therapeutic methods.
Sarcoidosis is an inflammatory disease that in 90 percent of cases affects the lungs, but can also attack the heart, skin and lymph system. The cause of the disease is not yet established, and there is currently ...
Scientists have developed a pioneering new technique that could revolutionise the accuracy, precision and clarity of super-resolution imaging systems.
A team of scientists, led by Dr Christian Soeller from the University of Exeter's Living Systems Institute, which champions interdisciplinary research and is a hub for new high-resolution measurement techniques, has developed a new way to improve the very fine, molecular imaging of biological samples.
The new method builds upon the success of an existing super-resolution imaging technique called DNA-PAINT ...
Scientists have been pondering if the microbiome of plants is due to nature or nurture. Research at Stockholm University, published in Environmental Microbiology, showed that oak acorns contain a large diversity of microbes, and that oak seedlings inherit their microbiome from these acorns.
"The idea that seeds can be the link between the microbes in the mother tree and its offspring has frequently been discussed, but this is the first time someone proves the transmission route from the seed to the leaves and roots of emerging plants", says Ahmed Abdelfattah, researcher at the Department of Ecology Environment and Plant ...
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- In 2018, passengers onboard a flight to Australia experienced a terrifying 10-second nosedive when a vortex trailing their plane crossed into the wake of another flight. The collision of these vortices, the airline suspected, created violent turbulence that led to a free fall.
To help design aircraft that can better maneuver in extreme situations, Purdue University researchers have developed a modeling approach that simulates the entire process of a vortex collision at a reduced computational time. This physics knowledge could then be incorporated into engineering design codes so that the aircraft ...
(Boston)--While aging is an unavoidable biological process with many influencing factors that results in visible changes to the hair, there is limited literature examining the characteristics of hair aging across the races. Now a new study describes the unique characteristics of hair aging among different ethnicities that the authors hope will aid in a culturally sensitive approach when making recommendations to prevent hair damage during one's life-time.
Among the findings: hair-graying onset varies with race, with the average age for Caucasians being mid-30s, that for Asians being late 30s, and ...
LAWRENCE -- The COVID-19 pandemic has created new perils and challenges for people experiencing substance use disorders and addictive behaviors. Social distancing and isolation can trigger loneliness, anxiety and depression. These circumstances have put some "recreational users" at risk for developing addictions and caused some in recovery from addictions to relapse.
At the same time, the pandemic has made it nearly impossible for mutual-help (e.g., AA, NA) recovery groups to gather in person, forcing a scramble to provide remote support through platforms like Zoom.
Now, researchers at the Cofrin Logan Center for Addiction Research and ...
The colons of African-Americans and people of European descent age differently, new research reveals, helping explain racial disparities in colorectal cancer - the cancer that killed beloved "Black Panther" star Chadwick Boseman at only 43.
Scientists led by UVA Health's Li Li, MD, PhD; Graham Casey, PhD; and Matt Devall, PhD, of the Center for Public Health Genomics, found that one side of the colon ages biologically faster than the other in both African-Americans and people of European descent. In African-Americans, however, the right side ages significantly faster, explaining why African-Americans are more likely to develop cancerous lesions on the right side and why they are more likely to suffer colorectal cancer at a younger age, ...
The study concludes that vegan diet has a broad effect on children's metabolism. Serum biomarker levels for vitamins A and D, cholesterol forms and essential amino acids were significantly lower in children on vegan diet compared to age-adjusted omnivores. In addition, docosahexaenoic acid is absent from vegan diet. The results were recently published in a high-profile international scientific journal EMBO Molecular Medicine.
Vegan diets gain popularity especially among young adults, and through choices of the families vegan diet is becoming more common in young children, too. The motives behind choosing a vegan lifestyle are ecological, ethical and health-related: vegan ...
ARLINGTON, Va. (Jan. 21, 2021) -- A new research agenda developed by 40 leading experts in healthcare epidemiology and infectious diseases defines the critical areas of study to inform clinical practice, policy, and prevention strategies for COVID-19 and future pandemics. "COVID-19 Research Agenda for Healthcare Epidemiology," published today in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, identifies the gaps in the understanding of the epidemiology, transmission, and individual as well as public health consequences of viral diseases that were revealed through some of the worst phases of the ...
