Low birth weight is frequently associated with a disproportionately high incidence of cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus, and kidney disease in adulthood. Epidemiological studies have identified an inverse association between low birth weight or being small for gestational age and hypertension in adulthood. We hypothesized that children born with low birth weight might have altered circa...

Maternal cardiovascular adaptations occur in normal pregnancy, systemically, and within the uterus. In humans, gestational control of blood pressure is clinically important. Transient structural remodeling of endometrial spiral arteries normally occurs in human and mouse pregnancies. In mice, this depends on uterine natural killer cell function. Using normal and immune-deficient mice, we asked ...

OBJECTIVE The aim of the present study was to evaluate the single and joint associations of maternal prepregnancy body mass index (BMI) and gestational weight gain (GWG) with pregnancy outcomes in Tianjin, China. METHODS Between June 2009 and May 2011, health care records of 33,973 pregnant women were collected and their children were measured for birth weight and birth length. The independen...

BACKGROUND An association between the level of vitamin D and the risk of pregnancy-related complications remains unclear. The aim of this study was to examine concentrations of 25(OH) vitamin D in Polish women with normal pregnancies and pregnancies complicated by gestational hypertension, preeclampsia or gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). Moreover, we analyzed an association between maternal...

Obesity is one of the most common and ignored public health problems according to World Health Organisation (WHO). Labour complications occur more frequently in women with increased prepregnancy body mass index (BMI), for example, gestational diabetes mellitus, pregnancy induced hypertension, fetal macrosomia and labour complications. Objectives: The aim of this study was evaluation of pregnanc...

Aim of our study was to ascertain, prospectively, whether serum uric acid is a suitable predictor of preeclampsia and/or the delivery of small-for-gestational-age infants in women with gestational hypertension. We screened 206 primiparas, with a singleton pregnancy, referred for recent onset of hypertension. At presentation, we measured serum uric acid, creatinine, blood glucose, hemoglobin and...

BACKGROUND Recent reports have shown a decrease in birth weight, a change from prior steady increases. Therefore we sought to describe the demographic and anthropometric changes in singleton term fetal growth. METHODS This was a retrospective cohort analysis of term singleton deliveries (37-42 weeks) from January 1, 1995 to January 1, 2010 at a single tertiary obstetric unit. We included all ...

BACKGROUND The impact of anti-hypertensive treatment on fetus was unclear, and hence, remains controversial. We set out in this study to estimate the prevalence of adverse pregnancy outcomes, including low birth weight, preterm delivery and small for gestational age amongst women with chronic hypertension, and to determine whether the use of anti-hypertensive drugs increases the risk of such ad...

OBJECTIVE To assess the relationship between glycemic control, pre-eclampsia, and gestational hypertension in women with type 1 diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Pregnancy outcome (pre-eclampsia or gestational hypertension) was assessed prospectively in 749 women from the randomized controlled Diabetes and Pre-eclampsia Intervention Trial (DAPIT). HbA(1c) (A1C) values were available up to...

This study aimed to establish a method of screening for pregnancy hypertension by a combination of maternal variables, including mean arterial pressure, uterine artery pulsatility index, pregnancy-associated plasma protein-A, and placental growth factor in early pregnancy. The base-cohort population constituted of 7797 singleton pregnancies, including 34 case subjects who developed preeclampsia...