Pregnancy has many effects on the body
Annastills/Getty Images
As anyone who experiences it knows, pregnancy is largely transforming the body – and now we have the most detailed picture yet of how the blood, organs and immune system on a weekly basis. This can help give post-pregnancy as well as reveal the risk of developing certain conditions while pregnant.
“We got an unprecedented overview of the way mother’s body changes week by week to compensate for the incredible burden on it and how long it takes to recover after birth,” says Uri Alon at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel.
Despite its importance, pregnancy has been underestimated, says Alon. For example, previous research traces how about 20 blood markers, such as salt and iron levels, changes in dozens of women during pregnancy up to about six weeks after birth using samples taken under standard healthcare. “These experiences are usually performed on a small number of patients, and they only try once every quarter or a time that is inliver,” says Alon.
To get a more understandable point of view, Alon and his colleagues analyzed blood tests, previously collection from more than 160,000 women in Israel, between 25 and 31 years, who collectively had over 300,000 pregnancies. Together, these samples gave a snapshot of the body every week from 20 weeks before design to 18 months after birth, where each woman provided data for a few times. This approach provides useful insight into how the body generally changes during pregnancy at a population level, although tracing the same women at each time would give a better picture of individual orbit, says Christoph Lees at Imperial College London.
The researchers mapped changes in 76 blood markers, such as the levels of proteins, fat and salts indicating the function of the liver, kidneys, blood, muscles, bones and immune system. They found that each of these markers ranged widely from levels of pre-perception levels during pregnancy before either gradually returning to levels of préngnancy or exceeding the other way before settling back to baseline before tensioning.
Remarkably, the researchers found that while 36 of the markers, including those related to blood coagulation, bourced back within a month of giving birth, 31 markers took more than 10 weeks to recover. For example, some changes in the liver and the immune system took about five months to return to levels before pregnancy, and several kidney markers took about six months. Some bone and muscle markers took and long. What this means for women’s health is unclear, but it needs to be explored in future work, says Alon.
In addition, a few other markers never returned to baseline levels, even over a year after birth. “The slightly old -fashioned opinion that for six or eight weeks after pregnancy, everyone is back to normal, clearly wrong,” says Lees.
For example, iron levels remained long after birth. “Women are very likely to be anemical [have low iron levels] After birth, it’s by bleeding and it takes a lot of iron stocks out of their bodies, “Lees says.” We typically think it takes six to 12 months for iron stores to come back to normal – this suggests it can take even. “
Meanwhile, the levels of a protein called CRP high remained. “CRP is affected by a variety of processes, such an inflammation is one of them one of them, but things like hormonal changes can also affect this,” Lees says. In another analysis, the team looked at markers in women who had pre-eclampsia delivered during pregnancy, where high blood pressure can cause headaches, vision problems and birth before and lead to deadly complications for both mother and baby if not treated. This revealed that women who developed pre -eclampsia before conception had elevated levels of blood cell fragments called platelets and a protein called everything compared to those who did not develop the condition.
“For decades, the idea has been that the dairy does not implant properly, and if it does not implant properly, the blood supply, the hormones and substances that lead to the mother getting high blood,” says Lees. “But as -examinations suggest that those who develop it have another cardiovascular function before pregnancy – these findings add weight to this theory.
If further studies show that these pre-design markers really indicate the risk of preeclampsia, they could potentially be used to find women at high risk. “Then you are targeted at them with the way of improving health prior to pregnancy – eith through exercise and lifestyle councils – to lower their risk,” says Lees.
Topics: