UWA: Exciting research from the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research
has found new answers for pregnant women with high blood pressure, which
is also a characteristic of the serious condition, pre-eclampsia. Pre-eclampsia
is a problem in 5 to 10 per cent of all pregnancies in Australia and
can threaten the lives of the mother and unborn child.There is
currently no cure except delivering the baby, which can cause health
problems for the child if the birth is pre-term. Most traditional
medications for high blood pressure, or hypertension, are harmful for
the foetus.
Professor Ruth Ganss, head of the Vascular Biology
and Stromal Targeting Laboratory at the Perkins said pregnant women
produced more blood and fluid and their blood vessels needed to relax
and expand to meet the baby’s demands.
“When the vessels stay
constricted and the mother experiences hypertension, the mother and the
placenta can’t provide enough nutrients for the foetus,” Professor Ganss
said.
“Now, our research on a regulator called RGS5 has led to a
new understanding about the somewhat mysterious process which makes
blood vessels constrict or relax during pregnancy.
“It also shows
that that a woman with no previous experience of high blood pressure
can become hypertensive during pregnancy which then can cause
pre-eclampsia.”
Professor Ganss said the research had opened the
door for a potential treatment, using an existing drug which is
currently being used to help female infertility.
The drug works
to relax abnormally constricted blood vessels and allows more blood to
supply the demands of the foetus. Most importantly, work in the
laboratory suggests that it would not be toxic for the foetus like other
blood pressure medication.
“If this medication was used for
short weeks during pregnancy, this would allow women at risk to keep
their blood pressure under control until they reach full term, which
would have huge benefits for the child,” she said.
The drug would
need to be tested in clinical trials. The new research by Professor
Ganss’s laboratory ties in with her work on cancer and the way blood
vessels remodel themselves to feed tumours.
The paper, Regulator of G protein signalling 5 is a determinant of gestational hypertension and preeclampsia, has been published in the high impact factor journal Science Translational Medicine. It was a national interdisciplinary collaboration with groups from Perth, Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney.