Active clinical trials for "Pre-Eclampsia"

The hypertensive disorders of pregnancy are the medical complications more prevalent during pregnancy. In Canada, approximately 1% of pregnancies have complications due to a pre-existing hypertension, 5-6% because of hypertension of pregnancy without proteinuria and 1-2% by preeclampsia. Metabolomics involves a new technology to investigate small molecules that characterize biochemical pathways of interest. The change in concentration levels of these molecules in various biological samples such as urine and blood in the presence of a disease or a patient can be particularly useful for identifying new biomarkers. Our hypothesis is that metabolic patterns in blood and urine of pregnant women who had preeclampsia differ from the metabolomics patterns of patients without preeclampsia.The whole research program has two complementary objectives in order to expect a decrease of prematurity: a) better understanding of all the physiological mechanisms leading to prematurity and b) better identification of patients at high risk for a better management of these women.

Adaptation of the maternal immune system to accommodate the semi-allogeneic fetus is necessary for pregnancy success. Dysregulation of this immune adaptation is implicated in reproductive disorders as infertility, recurrent miscarriage, fetal growth restriction, and preeclampsia. The mechanisms being responsible for fetal tolerance are not known. Several T cell subsets have been implicated in fetal tolerance. The effects of preeclampsia on memory cells are not known. The main objective of this study is to analyze the effect of preeclampsia on levels of immune cells.

Preeclampsia is a disease of pregnancy affecting 3% to 8% of all pregnancies and is a major cause of maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality. Characterized by alter placentation with subsequent release of inflammatory mediators leading to a generalized endothelial dysfunction. It is now accepted that endothelial dysfunction heralds the clinical manifestations of preeclampsia. The side-stream darkfield (SDF) microscopy device emits a 550 nm green light with a depth region of interest of 500 um. Green light is absorbed by the erythrocytes and appears black. SDF is a well-known non-invasive tool that can study the microcirculatory changes. It was used before in many situations especially in sepsis and septic shock patients. Near-infra-red spectroscopy (NIRS) device, measures the absorbance of near-infra-red (NIR) light by tissues perfused with oxygenated blood, and is capable of measuring changes in parenchymal volume tissues. It was used before in many situations (including pregnant patients) to reflect the tissue oxygenations. The investigators are planning to use the SDF and NIRS tools to study the microcirculatory change in preeclamptic subjects and normal pregnant subjects. If these two devices are able to determine any changes this should stand as a baseline for future studies in this field.

Second trimester homocysteine & uterine artery doppler will be assessed& the cases will be followed up till delivery for development of preeclampsia, IUGR(intra-uterine growth retardation) & other obstetric complications.

The study aims to investigate the impact of preeclampsia on hemostasis.

Catestatin is a kind of protein involved with cardiovascular disease. Accumulated evidence shows that Catestatin may be a predictor of primary hypertension, but whether it plays the same role in pregnant hypertensive disorders needs to be determined. By measuring the plasma level of Catestatin, main biochemical marks and UCG in healthy pregnancy and pregnancy with hypertension, the research may contribute to this problem.

Relation of certain maternal serum antibodies to Doppler changes will be studied in cases suffering from hypertension with pregnancy.

200 women at risk factor for preeclampsia will be subjected to transabdominal Doppler ultrasonography for assessment of placental volume measurements, pulasatility index (PI) and resistivity index (RI) in both uterine arteries, and assessment of the placental volume and its vascular indices (VI, FI, VFI)

Magnesium sulphate is an inorganic salt with multiple therapeutic applications in medicine it has been widely utilized and studied on a diverse set of conditions such as asthma, cardiac arrhythmia and stroke. In pregnant women ,MgSo4 has been used in many cases such as for seizures prophylaxis in preeclampsia, tocolysis in preterm labour and for fetal neuroprotection in immenint preterm delivery.MgSo4 has been used as the standard drug for tocolysis in preterm labour and other drugs have been compared to it.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether exposure to hypertensive disorders of pregnancy and/or a preterm birth results in alterations in the cardiovascular system during infancy.