Approved Research

Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes and Cardiovascular Disease Risk

Lay summary

Aims:

We aim to use the data available from the UK Biobank to understand how genetic, metabolic, and clinical factors affect the intersection between adverse pregnancy outcomes and cardiovascular risk in women.  

Background:

The genome is made up of 3 billion base pairs - A, C, T & G - and variation in the genetic code has been identified to be associated with risk for many diseases. Certain cardiometabolic traits and medication target loci have been associated with risk for hypertensive disorders of pregnancy. Expanding off of this, it will be valuable to look across many other APO (phenotypes) to determine other important associations that may exist between cardiometabolic traits and medication target loci with all APOs, not just hypertensive disorders of pregnancy.

Duration:

The anticipated project should take approximately three years after obtaining access to the data.

Public health impact:

Despite advances in genetic and other molecular techniques, determination of which patients are at most risk of for a broad array of APOs has yet to be explored. This project may potentially identify novel associations of diseases associated with the genetic, metabolomic, and clinical areas we plan to focus on. Ultimately, we hope this work will lead to more personalized approaches to pregnancy and postpartum care and improved maternal morbidity outcomes. Understanding the interaction between APOs and CV risk will help us to identify women at risk, better estimate their long-term CV risk, and improve our efforts to prevent and manage heart disease aggressively.