Another way to reduce symptoms involves exposing women to GDF15 prior to pregnancy, to “prime” or prepare them for elevated levels of the hormone once they become pregnant. Lowering GDF15 is one way to potentially address pregnancy sickness-and the present study provides the first human evidence that it is likely safe to do so. “Knowing this gives us a clue as to how we might prevent this from happening.” Women who are more sensitive to the hormone get the sickest, said Professor Sir Stephen O’Rahilly, MD, co-director of the Wellcome-Medical Research Council Institute of Metabolic Science at the University of Cambridge, who led the collaboration. “We now know that women get sick during pregnancy when they are exposed to higher levels of the hormone GDF15 than they are used to,” said Marlena Fejzo, PhD, a clinical assistant professor of population and public health sciences in the Center for Genetic Epidemiology at the Keck School of Medicine and the paper’s first author. Women exposed to lower levels of GDF15 before pregnancy experience more severe symptoms. The new study supports the causal role of GDF15 in pregnancy sickness and reveals the role a woman’s sensitivity to the hormone has in determining the severity of her symptoms. Recently, a growing body of evidence has linked the symptoms to GDF15, a hormone produced in the placenta that increases substantially during pregnancy. But little has been known about the cause. An additional 2% experience an extreme form called hyperemesis gravidarum (HG) that can lead to weight loss, dehydration, and hospitalization. Nausea and vomiting have long been a forgone conclusion for expectant mothers, affecting 80% of women at some point during pregnancy.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |