Funding outcome

Women are increasingly having their first pregnancies at an older age. In Canada, 22% of women deliver babies when over 35 years of age (also called advanced maternal age). A woman's body undergoes massive changes to the blood vessels to enable a normal pregnancy and provide sufficient blood supply to the fetus. Therefore, if the blood vessels do not adapt as they should during pregnancy, this can cause complications such as low birth weight and high blood pressure. Advanced maternal age is a risk factor for these pregnancy complications, which are thought to be due to inappropriate adaptations of the mother's blood vessel adaptations to pregnancy. However, developing interventions against the complex interaction between aging and pregnancy in blood vessels requires a greater understanding of the specific mechanisms. Our lab previously discovered that pregnant uterine arteries from aged rats had impaired function compared to young rats, and our findings suggested a mechanism that we hypothesize is key to the impaired blood vessel function. In the current study, we will investigate the function of blood vessels from pregnant young and aged (equivalent to ~35 years in humans) rats. Our blood vessel function tests will use selective drugs to identify specific mechanisms. In parallel, we will assess vessels from human biopsies acquired during caesarean deliveries from young and advanced maternal age pregnancies. Each compromised pregnancy has short- and long-term adverse effects on the cardiovascular health of both mother and child. So, improvement of blood vessel function in women of advanced maternal age will benefit the cardiovascular health of multiple generations.