Irish team leads way in saving lives of mothers
A SIMPLE blood test that can predict life-threatening high blood pressure in pregnancy is being developed in Ireland.
Groundbreaking work on the pre- eclampsia project has earned researchers based at University College Cork and Cork University Maternity Hospital a major award from the American Heart Association.
The international award is a first for Irish researchers and also a first for pregnancy research.
Professor of Obstetrics at UCC Louise Kenny, who leads the research, said: ‘It’s about saving the lives of mothers and their babies.’
Pre-clampsia usually begins after 20 weeks’ gestation in a woman whose blood pressure had been normal. Left untreated, it can lead to serious – even fatal – complications.
The award-winning project involved almost 6,000 first-time mothers and babies from four countries – including 1,600 Irish mothers.
The project, named SCOPE – Screening for Pregnancy Endpoints – aims to predict and prevent major complications of late pregnancy, such as pre- eclampsia, which claims the lives of more than 70,000 women and more than 500,000 infants worldwide each year.
Professor Kenny said the potentially deadly disorder could be prevented with the development of a test that could identify women who are at greatest risk. SCOPE aims to develop an early-pregnancy screening test and it is hoped that it will be available within ten years.
‘Our goal is to save the lives of af- fected mothers and babies by reducing and eventually preventing the life-threatening complications associated with pre- eclampsia,’ Professor Kenny said.
The American Heart Association Award is for the group’s first major publication, which looked at 75 biomarkers ‘of interest’, which may have indicated women at risk.
A sister study, IMPROVED, is now building on the work done on the SCOPE project. In IMPROVED, samples collected will be used to ‘test the test’ that has been developed to detect women at increased risk of pre-eclampsia.
In Cork, 750 women have taken part so far in the IMPROVED study and 750 more are being recruited.
Health Research Board chief executive Graham Love said: ‘This is a fantastic achievement by Professor Kenny and her research team.’
The researchers are based at the Irish Centre for Fetal and Neonatal Translation Research at UCC and the Cork University Maternity Hospital.
The researchers are inviting firsttime mothers who are less than 17 weeks pregnant to get involved in the study. The IMPROVED team can be contacted by email at improved @ucc.ie