Funding outcome

There are many changes that occur to the mother's body during pregnancy. These changes are to make sure that the unborn child receives the right amount of nutrients and oxygen through the placenta. Most of the time the mother successfully makes these changes and both mother and child are healthy. These changes include increased or decreased factors in the mother's blood that control her blood pressure and the flow of blood through the placenta to the unborn child. Other factors that control glucose and insulin levels in the mother also change during pregnancy. In some cases, the mother does not make these necessary changes. This leads to poor health during pregnancy such as high blood pressure or gestational diabetes. If women experience hypertension or diabetes before or during pregnancy, both the women and their children have higher risks of developing diseases later in life. We still do not fully understand why some women develop these complications. This project will investigate the relationship between three factors found in mother's blood. We already know that each of these factors can affect each other and also can affect blood pressure and glucose levels in the general population. However, we do not know the relationship between these factors in pregnancy. We will study samples from women who had hypertension or diabetes during pregnancy and compare the results to those who had a normal pregnancy. Blood samples and information on the mothers will be obtained from the established Alberta Pregnancy Outcomes and Nutrition study. We will measure these factors at mid-pregnancy, late pregnancy and three months after the baby is born. We will first determine whether these factors increase or decrease in normal pregnancy. We can then relate the levels of these factors to high blood pressure or diabetes in pregnancy. We will determine whether the levels and relationship between these factors in mid-pregnancy can predict the development of these two conditions in pregnancy. The significance of this research is that by measuring these factors in mid-pregnancy, we may be able to predict the women who will develop complications later in pregnancy. If we can identify women as risk early in their pregnancies, we can better monitor their health and even provide recommendations that may help prevent conditions that can lead to both immediate and long-term health problems in both the mother and her child.