Adiponectin administration to pregnant mice decreases nutrient transport and fetal growth. An adiponectin deficiency, on the other hand, as seen in obese women during pregnancy, alters fetal growth; however, the mechanism is unclear. To determine the...
We have previously demonstrated prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE)-related alterations in maternal and infant iron homeostasis. Given that early iron deficiency and PAE both lead to growth restriction and deficits in recognition memory and processing sp...
Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), a metabolic disease that develops with the increase in insulin resistance during late pregnancy, is currently one of the most common complications affecting pregnancy. The polygenic nature of GDM, together with th...
Altered fetal growth, either reduced or exacerbated, is associated with adverse perinatal outcomes. The underlying pathogenetic mechanisms of altered growth remain unclear. Fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21) and insulin are both considered to be maj...
Adverse maternal environments such as small size, malnutrition, and metabolic conditions are known to influence fetal growth outcomes. Similarly, fetal growth and metabolic alterations may alter the intrauterine environment and affect all fetuses in...
Prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) causes fetal growth restrictions. A major driver of fetal growth deficits is maternal metabolic disruption; this is under-investigated following PAE. Untargeted metabolomics on the dam and fetus exposed to alcohol (ALC...
Alterations in intrauterine fetal growth increase the risk of adverse perinatal and neonatal outcomes. In this retrospective study, we analyzed data of 906 pregnancies collected in our maternal fetal medicine center, with different patterns of growth...
Appropriate in utero growth is essential for offspring development and is a critical contributor to long-term health. Fetal growth is largely dictated by the availability of nutrients in maternal circulation and the ability of these nutrients to be t...
9 May 2012
Undernutrition during fetal and postnatal life is still a major problem in many low- and middle-income countries. Even in high-income countries malnutrition may exist in cases of intrauterine growth retardation, as well as in chronic conditions such...
Placental insufficiency and gestational diabetes, which are both serious pregnancy complications, are linked to altered fetal growth, whether restricted or excessive, and result in metabolic dysfunction, hypoxic/oxidative injury, and adverse perinata...
Prenatal alcohol exposure disturbs fetal and placental growth and can alter DNA methylation (DNAm). Supplementation with the methyl donor choline can increase fetal and placental growth and restore DNAm, suggesting converging effects on one-carbon me...
Offspring exposed to gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) exhibit greater adiposity at birth. This early-life phenotype may increase offspring risk of developing obesity, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease later in life. I...
Early-onset fetal growth restriction (FGR) is associated with prolonged fetoplacental hypoxia and altered brain development, including deficits in hippocampal structure and function. Neuroprotective actions of lactoferrin have been described, mediate...
The cardiomyocyte undergoes dramatic changes in structure, metabolism, and function from the early fetal stage of hyperplastic cell growth, through birth and the conversion to hypertrophic cell growth, continuing to the adult stage and responding to...
Fetal growth is reliant on placental formation and function, which, in turn, requires the energy produced by the mitochondria. Prior work has shown that both mother and fetus operate via the phosphoinositol 3-kinase (PI3K)-p110α signalling path...
Maternal nutrition plays a vital role in fetal development, early development of neonates, and lactation and regulates the lifetime productivity of offspring. During pregnancy, maternal nutrition alters expression of the fetal genome and the developm...
Preeclampsia (PE) is characterized by maternal hypertension and placental dysfunction, often leading to fetal growth restriction (FGR). It is associated with an overexpression of the anti-angiogenic sFLT1 protein, which originates from the placenta a...
During pregnancy, the adipokines leptin and adiponectin can affect placental nutrient transport and inflammatory pathways, potentially leading to altered fetal growth and pregnancy complications including gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) and preec...
Programming is triggered through events during critical developmental phases that alter offspring health outcomes. High fat programming is defined as the maintenance on a high fat diet during fetal and/or early postnatal life that induces metabolic a...
27 January 2012
Fetal growth restriction and maternal smoking during pregnancy are independently implicated in lowering intellectual attainment in children. We hypothesized that only reduction of fetal growth that is attributable to extrinsic causes (e.g., maternal...
Two small leucine-rich proteoglycans (SLRP), decorin and biglycan, play important roles in structural–functional integrity of the placenta and fetal membranes, and their alterations can result in several pregnancy-associated diseases. In this review,...
The vector of modern obstetrics is aimed at finding ways to predict various placenta-associated complications, including those associated with neuronal dysfunction on in fetal growth restriction (FGR). The technology of fetal neuronal exosome (FNE) i...
Obesity in pregnancy induces metabolic syndrome, low-grade inflammation, altered endocrine factors, placental function, and the maternal gut microbiome. All these factors impact fetal growth and development, including brain development. The lipid met...
Impairments in placental development can adversely affect pregnancy outcomes. The bioactive nutrient choline may mitigate some of these impairments, as suggested by data in humans, animals, and human trophoblasts. Herein, we investigated the effects...
Fetal adaptations to harmful intrauterine environments due to pregnancy disorders such as preeclampsia (PE) can negatively program the offspring’s metabolism, resulting in long-term metabolic changes. PE is characterized by increased circulatin...
Placental lactogen (PL) is a peptide hormone secreted throughout pregnancy by both animal and human specialized endocrine cells. PL plays an important role in the regulation of insulin secretion in pancreatic β-cells, stimulating their prolifera...
Compromised pregnancies such as those associated with gestational diabetes mellitus, intrauterine growth retardation, preeclampsia, maternal undernutrition, and maternal stress may negatively affect fetal development. Such pregnancies may induce oxid...
Background: The trophoblast is a significant source of vitamin D synthesis during pregnancy, with the literature suggesting its role in fetal growth. We aim to underline a possible mechanism that would explain negative fetal outcomes in COVID-19-posi...
Maternal nutrient restriction impairs placental growth and development, but available evidence suggests that adaptive mechanisms exist, in a subset of nutrient restricted (NR) ewes, that support normal fetal growth and do not result in intrauterine g...
Research has identified fetal risk factors for adult diseases, forming the basis for the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) hypothesis. DOHaD suggests that maternal insults during pregnancy cause structural and functional changes in...
Background: Prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) can reduce fetal growth and cause neurodevelopmental disability. Prenatal choline supplements attenuate PAE-induced behavioral and growth deficits; however, the underlying mechanisms are unknown. Alcohol al...
Intra-uterine growth restriction (IUGR) is a common cause of fetal/neonatal morbidity and mortality and is associated with increased offspring predisposition for cardiovascular disease (CVD) development. Mitochondria are essential organelles in maint...
This study was designed to identify serum and amniotic fluid (AF) metabolic profile changes in response to gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) and explore the association with maternal–fetal outcomes. We established the GDM rat models by combining a...
Fetal growth restriction (FGR) is associated with short- and long-term morbidity, often with fetal compromise in utero, evidenced by abnormal Doppler velocimetry of fetal vessels. Lipids are vital for growth and development, but metabolism in FGR pre...
Introduction: This review aims to investigate the clinical implications of using the myocardial performance index (MPI), obtained through tissue Doppler imaging (TDI) and spectral Doppler, in assessing fetal cardiac function in growth-restricted fetu...
Background: The human fetal adrenal gland is a unique endocrine organ with distinct morphology and functional dynamics, which is significantly different from the postnatal adrenal. Its rapid growth and vital steroidogenic role during gestation have p...
Iron supplementation is recommended during pregnancy and fetal growth. However, excess iron exposure may increase the risk of abnormal fetal development. We investigated the potential side effects of high iron levels in fetuses and through their adul...
Doxorubicin (DOX), a category D pregnancy drug, is a chemotherapeutic agent that has been shown in animal studies to induce fetal toxicity, including renal abnormalities. Upregulation of the transient receptor potential cation (TRPC) 6 channel is inv...
Background: Dyslipidemia in pregnancy presents unique clinical challenges due to its effects on maternal and fetal health. This systematic review hypothesizes that molecular alterations in lipid metabolism during pregnancy contribute to adverse pregn...
In the ruminant placenta, glucose uptake and transfer are mediated by facilitative glucose transporters SLC2A1 (GLUT1) and SLC2A3 (GLUT3). SLC2A1 is located on the basolateral trophoblast membrane, whereas SLC2A3 is located solely on the maternal-fac...
ZnO NPs have been assessed to show adverse effects on reproductive organs, but the molecular mechanisms of reproductive toxicity have not been sufficiently studied. In this research, the dosage effects from the oral exposure of ZnO NPs (30 nm) to pre...
The amniotic fluid (AF) is a complex biofluid that reflects fetal well-being during development. AF con be divided into two fractions, the supernatant and amniocytes. The supernatant contains cell-free components, including placenta-derived micropart...
Previously, we identified elevated transcripts for the gene Oleoyl-ACP Hydrolase (OLAH) in the maternal circulation of pregnancies complicated by preterm fetal growth restriction. As placental dysfunction is central to the pathogenesis of both fetal...
In this study, we investigated the effects of ablation of uterine Forkhead Box A2 (Foxa2) on gene expression of fetal brain relative to placenta. Using a conditional knockout mouse model for uterine Foxa2, here we show that the lack of uterine Foxa2...
Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder is the main preventable cause of intellectual disability in the Western world. Although binge drinking is the most studied prenatal alcohol exposure pattern, other types of exposure, such as the Mediterranean, are comm...
During pregnancy, the maternal body adapts in several ways to create an optimal environment for embryonic growth. These changes include endocrine and metabolic shifts that can lead to insulin resistance and gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), impact...
We aimed to investigate the relation between the time intervals of the flow velocity waveform of ductus venosus (DV-FVW) and cardiac cycles. We defined Delta A as the difference in the time measurements between DV-FVW and cardiac cycles on the assump...
In vascular tissue engineering strategies, the addition of vascular-specific extracellular matrix (ECM) components may better mimic the in vivo microenvironment and potentially enhance cell–matrix interactions and subsequent tissue growth. For...
Preeclampsia (PE), an inflammatory state during pregnancy, is a significant cause of maternal and fetal morbidity and mortality. Adverse outcomes associated with PE include hypertension, proteinuria, uterine/placental abnormalities, fetal growth rest...
Pregnancy is generally studied as a biological interaction between a mother and a fetus; however, the father, with his characteristics, lifestyle, genetics, and living environment, is by no means unrelated to the outcome of pregnancy. The half of the...
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