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A test carried out during pregnancy could predict which women will develop a potentially fatal condition called pre-eclampsia, scientists say.
Presenting their study to the American Society of Nephrology, researchers said the test detected specific kidney cells in patients’ urine.
Out of 15 women who developed pre-eclampsia, all tested positive for the cells.
Experts say a simple, predictive test during pregnancy would be valuable.
Warning sign
Pre-eclampsia is a disorder which appears in the late stages of pregnancy and is characterised by high blood pressure and excess protein in the urine.
Researchers at the Mayo Clinic, who presented their work to the annual meeting of the American Society of Nephrology, tested 300 women
Dr Vesna Garovic assessed a test which detects the shedding of kidney cells called podocytes in the urine. The team had previously found podocytes present in patients with pre-eclampsia when they gave birth.
In this study, all the women who went on to develop pre-eclampsia had podocytes in their urine, while none of the 15 who went on to develop high blood pressure or the 44 healthy pregnant women did.
Although carried out on small numbers of women, the researchers say the test is highly accurate for predicting pre-eclampsia and could alert doctors early to the problem.
Ann Marie Barnard, chief executive of Action on Pre-Eclampsia, said an accurate test would help many women.
“A large number of the 1,500 women who call our helpline each year are terrified of becoming pregnant again because they have suffered pre-eclampsia, often with tragic results. Many do decide to go ahead with a new pregnancy anyway.
“Any test which can predict whether they are going to get it again has to be welcomed – while it cannot stop the disease occurring, it would enable services to be more closely focused on them and more alert to signs of the disease developing.”
And Andrew Shennan, professor of obstetrics at St Thomas Hospital in London, said: “Being able to use a simple accurate test in pregnancy, such as from a urine sample, would be valuable in identifying those women to watch closely.
“Current tests are not reliable enough, and further work is needed to confirm these promising findings in larger groups.”
A new research suggests that women with a history of eating disorders may struggle to get pregnant quickly. The study also found that these women are more than twice as likely to need fertility treatment
The women had a history of anorexia or bulimia.
The research was conducted by the King’s College London and University College London and reported the International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.
The 6.2% women with eating disorders were more likely to need fertility treatment compared with 2.7% of the general population.
However, perhaps surprisingly, more pregnancies in the group of women who had had anorexia at some point were unplanned.
Mary George of the eating disorders charity Beat said many people had no idea of the problems they could be causing in the future.
She said: “Eating disorders are very serious illnesses that are depriving the body of the nutrients that it needs.
Babies born in spring are slightly more likely to develop anorexia nervosa (an eating disorder characterized by extremely low body weight, distorted body image and an obsessive fear of gaining weight), while those born in the fall have a lower risk, say researchers.
Other academics said the effect was small and the disorder had many causes.
The researchers analysed data from four previous studies including 1,293 people with anorexia.
The researchers found an “excess of anorexia nervosa births” between March and June – for every seven anorexia cases expected, there were in fact eight.
There were also fewer than expected cases in September and October.
Dr Lahiru Handunnetthi, one of the report’s authors, at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, said: “A number of previous studies have found that mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression are more common among those born in the spring – so this finding in anorexia is perhaps not surprising.
Screening methods
“However, our study only provides evidence of an association. Now we need more research to identify which factors are putting people at particular risk.”
The report suggests seasonal changes in temperature, sunlight exposure and vitamin D levels, maternal nutrition and infections as “strong candidate factors”.
Dr Terence Dovey, from the Centre for Research into Eating Disorders, at Loughborough University, said: “Anorexia is a very complex multifaceted disorder,” adding that the study looked at just one aspect.
“Should we concentrate screening methods to those born in the winter months? No, we should not. It leaves too much error of margin and the potential significant difference is only small.”
Around 7,000 stillbirths occur globally every day, with the poorest nations worst affected, a series of papers published in The Lancet suggest.
An overwhelming 98% of the 2.6m stillbirths each year strike middle and low-income countries, they say.
Better clinical care and monitoring could halve stillbirths in poorer countries by 2020, the paper adds.
Save the Children said current opportunities to address the problem were currently being missed.
Invisible toll
Better clinical care and monitoring could cut the number of stillbirths worldwide, say the authors
The UN’s Millennium Development goals set out targets for maternal and child deaths, but the authors of the Lancet reports suggest stillbirths are being neglected, and are taking what they call an “invisible toll” in poorer countries.
Sub-Sahara Africa and South Asian countries continue to suffer the most.
The report tasks poorer countries with reducing still births by 50% by the end of the decade and sets out measures which can be taken.
“Care at birth will give us the biggest return and saves mothers, newborns and children,” Dr Joy Lawn of Save the Children told the BBC.
“Another really missed opportunity is treating syphilis during pregnancy and particularly in southern Africa, syphilis still kills babies and we estimate that around 136,000 stillbirths could be averted every year and that’s at relatively low cost – it’s about making your antenatal clinic services work.
“Other critical things would be treating hypertension in pregnancy, identifying diabetes in women who are pregnant and managing that better and then identifying babies that aren’t growing well.”
Some countries are already showing the way forward, according to the report.
Middle-income countries such as Columbia, China, Mexico and Argentina, have reduced their stillbirth rates by 40% to 50% in recent years.
Business at Senama market in Mansa District came to a halt last evening when a pregnant woman stripped naked in the market shelter after she was accused of stealing a Fifty Thousand Kwacha by her fellow trader.
The woman decided to strip naked after she failed to convince her accuser that she had not stolen the money.
The duo was selling vegetables at the market when they picked up a quarrel after one of them lost a K 50,000 and accused her friend of stealing the money.
ZANIS reports that after a prolonged argument, the woman who accused her counterpart of having stolen the money demanded that her friend produces all the money she had so that she could identify her K 50, 000 note.
It was at this point that the accused woman decided to strip naked in the full view of people who had gone to watch them argue and those that went to buy assorted items.
She told ZANIS that that she stripped naked to show her accuser that she did not steal her money. One of the on lookers who sort anonymity said it was shameful for a woman to resort to stripping naked in presence of men and children at the market.
She said it was unjustifiable for the accused woman to remove all her clothes in public even if she was pressurized by her friend.
Meanwhile, other women expressed displeasure at the event but condemned the woman who had accused the other of stealing the money for not listening to her friend’s explanation.
They said it would be more important for the women in question to settle their wrangles at the police station than reaching the extent of stripping naked in public.
In African, pre-eclampsia occurs in 10% of pregnancies
Scientists say they have identified genetic errors that appear to increase a pregnant woman’s chance of getting the condition called pre-eclampsia.
Pre-eclampsia is an abnormal state of pregnancy characterized by hypertension, fluid retention and albuminuria. If not detected and managed early it can be potentially life-threatening.
Approximately four in every 100 women develops this problem of high blood pressure and leaky kidneys during pregnancy. Black women are more likely to get high blood pressure and preeclampsia than white women. In African, pre-eclampsia occurs in 10% of pregnancies, which is significantly higher than the global average of approximately 4%.
Now researchers have found a faulty DNA which may be blamed in some cases. The report is presented in the journal PLoS Medicine. It is a discovery that could lead the way to identify and treat women at risk before it becomes life-threatening.
The US researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis analyzed DNA from over 300 pregnant women.
Sixty of these were healthy women but were hospitalized because they developed severe pre-eclampsia. The remaining 240 were women were under surveillance for other health complications. Forty of these also went on to develop pre-eclampsia.
Researchers analyzed the DNA from the subjects and found that some genetic errors were shared by five of the 60 healthy women and seven of the 40 “higher-risk pregnancy” women who developed pre-eclampsia.
The faulty DNA were located on genes that play a role in regulating immune response, confirming the suspicion that scientists had that pre-eclampsia could be provoked by hitches in the immune response. Generally, women with autoimmune diseases such as lupus have an increased risk of pre-eclampsia
The researchers plan to study more pregnant women and other genes to further their understanding.
Currently, the best way to stop the progress of pre-eclampsia is to deliver the baby. This contributes to the statistics of pre-mature babies who are at increased risks of several complications.
Further studies into these faulty genes may help to establish a protocol to identify women at increased risk of pre-eclampsia and put them on increased surveillance as early as possible in their pregnancy.
In communities where access to medical services is limited or unaffordable such as common in most African countries, these findings reveal promising potential for women in their pregnancies.
Michelle Bachelet, Executive Director, UN Women
Michelle Bachelet, Executive Director, UN Women
A hundred years ago today, women across the world took an historic step on the long road to equality. The first ever International Women’s Day was called to draw attention to the unacceptable and often dangerous working conditions that so many women faced worldwide. Although the occasion was celebrated in only a handful of countries, it brought over one million women out onto the streets, demanding not just better conditions at work but also the right to vote, to hold office and to be equal partners with men.
I suspect those courageous pioneers would look at our world today with a mixture of pride and disappointment. There has been remarkable progress as the last century has seen an unprecedented expansion of women’s legal rights and entitlements. Indeed, the advancement of women’s rights can lay claim to be one of the most profound social revolutions the world has seen.
One hundred years ago, only two countries allowed women to vote. Today, that right is virtually universal and women have now been elected to lead Governments in every continent. Women, too, hold leading positions in professions from which they were once banned. Far more recently than a century ago, the police, courts and neighbors still saw violence in the home as a purely private matter. Today two-thirds of countries have specific laws that penalize domestic violence and the United Nations Security Council now recognizes sexual violence as a deliberate tactic of war.
But despite this progress over the last century, the hopes of equality expressed on that first International Women’s Day are a long way from being realized. Almost two out of three illiterate adults are women. Girls are still less likely to be in school than boys. Every 90 seconds of every day, a woman dies in pregnancy or due to childbirth-related complications despite us having the knowledge and resources to make birth safe.
Across the world, women continue to earn less than men for the same work. In many countries, too, they have unequal access to land and inheritance rights. And despite high-profile advances, women still make up only 19 per cent of legislatures, 8% of peace negotiators, and only 28 women are heads of state or government.
It is not just women who pay the price for this discrimination. We all suffer for failing to make the most of half the world’s talent. We undermine the quality of our democracy, the strength of our economies, the health of our societies and the sustainability of peace. This year’s focus of International Women’s Day on women’s equally access to education, training, science and technology underscores the need to tap this potential.
The agenda to secure gender equality and women’s rights is a global agenda, a challenge for every country, rich and poor, north and south. It was in recognition of both its universality and the rewards if we get this right that the United Nations brought together four existing organizations to create UN Women. The goal of this new body, which I have the great privilege to lead, is to galvanize the entire UN system so we can deliver on the promise of the UN Charter of equal rights of men and women. It is something I have fought for my whole life.
As a young mother and a pediatrician, I experienced the struggles of balancing family and career and saw how the absence of child care prevented women from paid employment. The opportunity to help remove these barriers was one of the reasons I went into politics. It is why I supported policies that extended health and childcare services to families and prioritized public spending for social protection.
As President, I worked hard to create equal opportunities for both men and women to contribute their talents and experiences to the challenges facing our country. That is why I proposed a Cabinet that had an equal number of men and women.
As Executive Director of UN Women, I want to use my journey and the collective knowledge and experience all around me to encourage progress towards true gender equality across the world. We will work, in close partnership, with men and women, leaders and citizens, civil society, the private sector and the whole UN system to assist countries to roll out policies, programs and budgets to achieve this worthy goal.
I have seen myself what women, often in the toughest circumstances, can achieve for their families and societies if they are given the opportunity. The strength, industry and wisdom of women remain humanity’s greatest untapped resource. We simply cannot afford to wait another 100 years to unlock this potential.
About the author: Michelle Bachelet is the first Executive Director of UN Women, a newly formed UN organization dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women. She is the former President of Chile.
Pregnancy is a risky time when the slightest deviation from a healthy lifestyle can cause a lot of damage to the unborn child’s future.
Drinking alcohol when you’re pregnant can lead to foetal alcohol syndrome. And smoking too poses a threat to the unborn child.
Women who smoke are in fact twice as likely to have an extra-uterine pregnancy and three times as likely to suffer a miscarriage.
Causing facial abnormalities, delayed growth, malformations of the cranium and the brain, foetal alcohol syndrome can result in serious damage to the nervous system which in turn leads to delayed intellectual development.
The risk of premature birth is also greatly increased if a pregnant woman drinks alcohol.
Smoking too is harmful to the unborn child. The placenta transmits almost everything the mother consumes to the foetus and the mother’s blood will be loaded with carbon monoxide and nicotine.
Carbon monoxide is particularly toxic and slows down foetal development. Nicotine also acts as an intoxicant on the unborn child who, once born, is likely to suffer from withdrawal syndrome.
