Pre-eclampsia is a decidedly evil pregnancy-related condition for which all pregnant women are routinely scanned.
It is diagnosed by high blood pressure and the excretion of protein in the urine and is potentially fatal to both mother and child in the worst case scenario and may cause serious long-term health problems to babies who survive. It's not conclusively determined what causes pre-eclampsia but it is possible that it is caused by a placenta that has implanted to an insufficient depth in the uterus wall. This can give rise to a situation where the oxygen levels in the tissues are too low, causing the body to release inflammatory chemicals that then react upon the interior lining of blood vessels. This can result in multi-systemic failure, particularly the liver, lungs, kidney, brain and cardiovascular system. Pre-eclampsia, it's fair to say, is probably one of the biggest bogeymen of pregnancy.
Not good, huh?
On a slightly more upbeat note, it's important to realise that pre-eclampsia is pretty rare. It affects 3-5% of first pregnancies and is even lower for subsequent ones. It's more common where a mother has pre-existing high blood pressure or related issues.
Even better, a story released today indicates there's a possible no-lose solution at hand; good old calcium. As everyone knows, calcium is rather essential for foetuses to grow strong healthy bones and helps prevent osteoporosis, but it also has the effect of reducing the chances of pre-eclampsia and general high blood-pressure issues. The effect of taking supplements is significantly better for women who have low existing levels of calcium in their diet than on those who have a good intake. Better than this though, there are no reported side effects of taking calcium supplement. If you take calcium in supplement form and don't actually need it, there are no effects. All this has been reported in a systematic review of 12 randomised control studies around the world by The Cochrane Collaboration, an international body that evaluates medical research.
For those of you in the US, I've read that if this advice becomes accepted after review, it would be a complete reversal of the current position of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. In the UK, we'd need to do a bit more research, and wherever you are, you may want to wait for your medical advisers to say this is all cool and groovy rather than taking the advice of some bloke on a blog*. However, things sound good. It looks as though this may be one big End-of-Level boss that's had its arse kicked.
And what will all this mean if the powers-that-be agree this work has merit? Milky Moustaches all round!
* I make no claims to be a medical expert and though I hope what I've written is accurate, I sincerely suggest you check a more credible source than me for more details. Here's a UK link that may have some good stuff: http://www.pre-eclampsia.co.uk/ and a US one: http://preeclampsia.upmc.com/ There are others and I'm not suggesting these are necessarily the definitive links available. Right, er... that should stop anyone suing... Anyhow, if you're so stupid that you follow medical advice because some bloke who doesn't even use his real name on a blog said so, you deserve pretty much whatever you get.
Our hospital is part of a research project into 'pre-e' so I will be offered an additional 25 weeks scan (for the US audience in the UK it is generally the case that most women are offered a 10-12 week dating scan and a 20 week fetal anatomy scan - unless there is a history of ectopic pregnancy or miscarriage where women will also be offered a scan at around 6-7 weeks to make sure everythign is progressing as it should be). When we went for our nucal they were also using some of the observations along with a later after birth questionnaire to build a research profile on pre-e. It's kind of nice to think that this pregnancy may go some way to helping mothers and even saving babies in the future. Lots of the older ladies in my office have reminded me that they didn't even have ultrasound. I can't imagine not knowing until birth that something was wrong.
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