Pregnancy hypertension or Preeclampsia is a complication of pregnancy. Usually, the mother’s blood pressure can be successfully managed with oral medication and the pregnancy can continue, but sometimes the baby needs to be delivered early. This can cause problems if the pregnancy is not near term. A new study has shown that natural antioxidants found in mushrooms may help treat this pregnancy issue.

Woman cradling pregnant belly

Research from the Department of Pharmacology & Therapeutics at University College Cork (UCC), the INFANT Centre at UCC and the University of Liverpool, as well as The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability (DTU Biosustain) at Technical University of Denmark, have shown in a rat model that a natural diet derived antioxidant L-ergothioneine can relieve some of the clinical symptoms of preeclampsia. The hope is that the same will be true for humans.

“Our research shows that treating rats with preeclampsia with the natural antioxidant L-ergothioneine reduced blood pressure, prevented fetal growth restriction and dampened production of the damaging substances released from the placenta during preeclampsia,” says Dr. Cathal McCarthy, leader of this research in a press release from the INFANT Centre at UCC.

In order to be able to make enough L-ergothioneine to eventually treat patients, the scientists are looking into ways of producing this compound efficiently in high amounts using yeast cell factories. Ergothioneine can be found in a wide variety of foods, particularly in mushrooms, where amounts are relatively high compared to other foods.

“Today, ergothioneine is either made chemically or extracted from mushrooms, but at DTU Biosustain we are developing a method to make it biologically. This should lead to its much wider availability at competitive prices,” says Douglas Kell, Associated Scientific Director at DTU Biosustain and Research Chair in Systems Biology Department of Biochemistry, University of Liverpool.

Much evidence exists for L-ergothioneine’s benefits in a variety of neurological and vascular disorders as well. Thus, L-ergothioneine appears to be a safe, natural diet derived antioxidant whose therapeutic potential looks promising but remains to be validated in human clinical trials.

—Jennifer Swartvagher

Featured photo: freestocks on Unsplash

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During those nine months of pregnancy, expectant moms can expectant to spend a lot of time at their doctor’s office being weighed, measured and checked. A new study examines a prenatal care app that could replace some of those in-person visits and it’s working.

A study conducted by researchers at George Washington University and published in the journal JMIR mHealth and uHealth has found that Babyscripts, a virtual care app for managing obstetrics was successful in reducing the amount of in-person prenatal care visits needed during pregnancy while maintaining patient satisfaction.

photo: Jacob Sippel via U.S. Navy

The study included pregnant women between the ages of 18 and 40 who were diagnosed with a low-risk pregnancy, meaning that they had no patient history of hypertension, diabetes, renal disease or other condition that could negatively affect the outcome of the pregnancy. According to the results of the study Babyscripts users visited their obstetrician an average of 7.8 times while those who did not use the app visited theirs an average of 10.2 times.

“The positive results of this study are a huge validation of our belief in the power of technology to support mothers and providers without compromising quality,” Anish Sebastian, CEO and co-founder of Babyscripts, said in a press release. “This research shows that mobile health has the potential to deliver precision care to mothers while allowing providers to allocate time to the most vulnerable of their patients, and ultimately save lives.”

—Shahrzad Warkentin

 

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