Assessment of Potential Therapies for Pre-eclampsia and Fetal Growth Restriction using Murine Models

先兆子痫和胎儿生长受限（婴儿出生时比他们应该的小）是影响多达十分之一的怀孕的并发症，并导致受影响的母亲和婴儿的严重疾病。在英国，每年有多达5名妇女和600名婴儿死于先兆子痫;四分之一的死胎是由胎儿生长受限引起的，这是六分之一婴儿猝死的原因。在这些并发症中幸存下来的婴儿患脑瘫的风险更大，在以后的儿童和成人生活中，他们患心脏病，糖尿病，由先兆子痫和胎儿生长受限并发的妊娠所生的婴儿给NHS带来沉重的负担，所有重症监护婴儿床的20%被先兆子痫妊娠的婴儿占用，并且每年花费约4.2亿英镑用于生长受限婴儿的重症监护。此外，照顾患有先兆子痫和胎儿生长受限相关疾病的儿童给家庭、NHS和社会服务带来了沉重的负担。不幸的是，先兆子痫和胎儿生长受限都没有治愈方法，患有严重问题的妇女不得不早产婴儿，这也带来了慢性疾病和死亡的巨大风险。虽然目前还没有专门设计用于治疗这些疾病的药物，但有一些可能的治疗方法可用于治疗其他疾病，并且已被证明对未怀孕的人是安全的。这些治疗不能在孕妇身上进行测试，除非首先确定它们在治疗动物先兆子痫和胎儿生长受限的症状方面是否有效和安全。我们想测试一些现有的药物，看看它们是否有助于治疗这些疾病的症状，在一些特殊饲养的小鼠品系，显示先兆子痫和胎儿生长受限的迹象时，怀孕。一旦我们发现哪些治疗方法在小鼠中具有最大的治疗潜力，我们将在人类胎盘和妇女（经知情书面同意）分娩后的血管上使用它们，以测试它们是否对人类妊娠有效。这些实验将提供关于如何设计临床试验的信息，以开发这些治疗患有先兆子痫或胎儿生长受限的孕妇的方法。

Pre-eclampsia and fetal growth restriction (babies born smaller than they should be) are complications that affect up to 1 in 10 pregnancies and are responsible for grave illness in affected mothers and babies. Each year in the UK, up to 5 women and 600 babies die because of pre-eclampsia; 1 in 4 stillbirths are caused by fetal growth restriction and this is responsible for 1 in 6 sudden infant deaths.Babies who survive these complications are at greater risk of cerebral palsy and, later on in life as children and adults, they are at higher risk of suffering heart disease, diabetes, bone disease and mental health problems.Babies born of pregnancies complicated by pre-eclampsia and fetal growth restriction place a heavy burden on the NHS, with 20% of all intensive care baby cots being occupied by babies from pre-eclampsia pregnancies and around #420m being spent each year on intensive care of growth restricted babies. In addition, looking after children with illnesses related to pre-eclampsia and fetal growth restriction places a heavy burden on families, the NHS and social services.Unfortunately, there are no cures for either pre-eclampsia or fetal growth restriction and women suffering from severe problems have to undergo premature delivery of their baby, which also carries great risks of chronic illness and death. Although there have been no drugs specially designed to treat these illnesses, there are a number of possible treatments that are used to treat other illnesses and that have already been shown to be safe in people who are not pregnant. These treatments cannot be tested on pregnant women without first establishing whether they are effective and safe in treating symptoms of pre-eclampsia and fetal growth restriction in animals. We would like to test a number of existing drugs to see if they are useful at treating the symptoms of these diseases in a number of specially-bred mouse strains that display signs of pre-eclampsia and fetal growth restriction when pregnant. Once we have found which treatments have the greatest potential for treatment in mice, we will use them on blood vessels taken from human placentas and women (with informed written consent) after they have given birth to test whether they might be effective in human pregnancy. Such experiments will provide information on how to design clinical trials for the development of these treatments in pregnant women suffering from pre-eclampsia or fetal growth restriction.