Irish hospital involved in international screening programme on pre-eclampsia
AN IRISH hospital will participate in an international research project aimed at developing tests which can identify pregnant women at risk of developing serious complications in pregnancy, including the life-threatening pre-eclampsia.
Cork University Maternity Hospital (CUMH) has begun assessing the first of 3,000 women who will take part in the study over the next three years with a view to adding the findings to an international study being undertaken in Australia, New Zealand, the US and UK.
The Screening for Obstetric and Pregnancy Endpoint programme, which is being conducted by the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at University College Cork (UCC), will involve voluntary participants being assessed by a team of doctors, scientists and midwives.
According to consultant obstetrician/gynaecologist and Health Research Board (HRB) clinician scientist, Dr Louise Kenny, who heads up the UCC research team, the Irish study, which has received €1.6 million funding from the HRB, will contribute significantly to the overall study.
Dr Kenny said the study of 3,000 women in Munster will account for almost one-third of the 10,000 women being studied by researchers at Adelaide in Australia, Auckland in New Zealand, London, Manchester and Leeds in the UK, and San Francisco in the US.
According to Dr Kenny, the study will look at three particular conditions affecting women in pregnancy: pre-eclampsia (which results in the death annually of some 50,000 to 100,000 women worldwide); intrauterine growth restriction; and spontaneous pre-term births.
Dr Kenny said statistics show that one in six of the 3,000 women who volunteer for the CUMH study will develop one of these conditions and the study hopes to find out what makes those women more susceptible to developing these conditions.
Researchers still don't know what causes pre-eclampsia, which is characterised by high blood pressure, protein in the urine, and swelling. It can damage the kidneys and the only effective treatment is to deliver the baby at a time when doctors feel the baby will survive.
Although detailed statistics aren't as readily available for pre-eclampsia for Ireland as for the UK, Dr Kenny said that Irish rates follow the UK pattern, where, over the past three years, 15 women, who are typically young, fit and healthy, have died from the disease.
"A fifth of all neonatal intensive care admissions in the UK occur as a result of pre-eclampsia and some 500-600 babies there die. Most babies survive but many end up with cerebral palsy and other conditions and Ireland would have similar rates proportionate to our population," said Dr Kenny.
"We know that if a woman doesn't develop pre-eclampsia on her first pregnancy, she has a low chance of developing it in later pregnancies, whereas if your mother had pre-eclampsia, you are four times more likely to develop it, though there's no simple genetic component."
Data will be collected for the first three years and researchers will spend the fourth year collating and studying the findings, in the hope of developing tests which will identify women most at risk of developing pre-eclampsia, said Dr Kenny.