Source: Thailand Medical News Nov 25, 2019 5 years, 4 weeks, 1 day, 20 hours, 30 minutes ago
A team of researchers from Lund University have for more than two decades been working on developing a drug against
preeclampsia, a serious disorder which annually affects around 9 million pregnant women worldwide and is one of the main causes of death in both mothers and unborn babies.
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Formerly called toxemia,
preecalmpsia is a condition that pregnant women develop. It's marked by high blood pressure in women who haven't had high blood pressure before. Preeclamptic women will have a high level of protein in their urine and often also have swelling in the feet, legs, and hands. This condition usually appears late in pregnancy, though it can happen earlier and may even develop just after delivery.
If undiagnosed,
preeclampsia can lead to eclampsia, a serious condition that can put both mother and baby at risk, and in rare cases, cause death. Women with
preeclampsia who have seizures are considered to have eclampsia.
There's no way to cure
preeclampsia except for delivery, and that can be a scary prospect for moms-to-be.
Now, medical researchers have published a study in the journal
Scientific Reports that opens up opportunities for further research towards a drug they hope will save the lives of many pregnant women in the future. The study was conducted in a transgenic mouse model of
preeclampsia,the results are important since they confirm previous studies by the research team showing that alpha-1-microglobulin has potential therapeutic effects in
preeclampsia. Trials on patients have recently been launched.
Dr Stefan Hansson, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Lund University and senior consultant physician at Skåne University Hospital in Lund, who is the principal investigator behind the study together with colleagues including senior researcher Lena Erlandsson told
Thailand Medical News, "The treatment, based on the human body's own scavenger protein A1M (alpha-1-microglobulin) which is present in all vertebrates, has a good effect on the disease symptoms such as high blood pressure and protein leakage from the kidneys into the urine. We also observed an improvement in organ function in the kidneys and the placenta. We saw no indication of side effects. In the study now published using the
preeclampsia mouse model, which best reflects the various stages of the disease during pregnancy, the mice develop serious
preeclampsia in early pregnancy. This feels like a milestone in our research, as patient studies, known as Phase 1 clinical trials, began in the spring to establish the properties of A1M in order to develop a drug."
Along with his colleague, Dr Bo Åkerström, professor of infection medicine, Stefan Hansson started the studies on A1M several years ago and observed that A1M stopped the leakage of protein in the kidneys. They also saw that the placenta was repaired and that the destroyed structures in the cells' smallest components were restored.
Dr Stefan Hansson explained, "In
preeclampsia, the cells of the placen
ta looked approximately as though all the trees had been blown over in a storm, and after treatment with A1M they stood up again. When I saw that for the first time, I became a scientific believer. Research takes time and costs a lot of money. Bo Åkerström has spent his entire professional life on understanding and describing the properties of the A1M protein and, in the last ten years, we have been studying it in the laboratory as a
drug candidate. The results from the clinical trials will be crucial."
The researchers believe that a commercially available drug will be available sometime by 2022.
Reference : Lena Erlandsson et al. Alpha-1 microglobulin as a potential therapeutic candidate for treatment of hypertension and oxidative stress in the STOX1 preeclampsia mouse model, Scientific Reports (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-44639-9
