Cardiovascular Risk in Infants Exposed to Pre-eclampsia in Utero

An increasing number of scientific publications show that high blood pressure is being described in younger and younger children of African ancestry. It therefore makes sense to seek for the causes of this raised blood pressure in the in utero events. Recent studies have attributed and increased risk to cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors to the gestational environment. Pre-eclampsia (PE) is associated with endothelial dysfunction and oxidative stress in the mother which may influence how the developing foetus interacts with the external environment later on in life. Indeed scientific literature suggests that the foeto-placental vascular endothelial dysfunction may cause epigenetic alteration in the intrauterine environment of the foetus which may be at the origin of chronic diseases in children, thus predisposing them to risk factors of CVD. However, very few studies in women of African ancestry have been carried out to investigate whether or not children born of pre-eclamptic mothers of African ancestry are at risk of developing CVDs. Hence, the aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between pre-eclampsia and cardiovascular risk in children born to pre-eclampsic mothers in a rural South African population. A prospective case-control control design recruiting pre-eclamptic and normotensive pregnant women and their offspring subsequently will be used. CVD risk will be accessed in the pregnant women at 30 weeks of gestation and in the offspring at birth and then six weeks later. The difference in CVD risk between children born to these two groups of women will be assessed and the correlation between maternal and offspring risks for CVDs determined. It is expected that results obtained from this project will provide information on the cardiovascular effect of in utero exposure to PE in a population of African ancestry. This knowledge will advise policy on the management of women with pre-eclampsia with a view of preventing cardiovascular diseases i