Preeclampsia

Preeclampsia

Another Reason to Make Love

Your partner’s sperm may protect you against severe complications

Even women with no history of hypertension can find the physical and emotional demands of pregnancy to be a recipe for high blood pressure. Untreated, this hypertension can lead to severe complications for both the mother and fetus. And in roughly 1 in 10 pregnancies, a dangerous condition called preeclampsia can develop during the last trimester.

Symptoms include not only hypertension, but blurred vision, swelling in the face and hands as a result of fluid retention, and protein in the urine. Headaches, nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pains may also arise, and, if neglected, this toxemia can lead to full-blown eclampsia, a condition that can produce seizures that are potentially fatal to both the mother and the child.

Now a study published in a respected medical journal, the Lancet had put forth a possible explanation for preeclampsia. Following up on earlier research suggesting that the condition occurs more frequently in women who have never before been pregnant or are pregnant by a new partner if the have been pregnant previously, researchers studied a group of women in Guadeloupe, where it is not unusual for women to have children by many partners. Because of the prevailing social attitude there about having children with multiple partners, the investigators were able to gather unusually detailed information about their subjects’ sexual history for the study.

Goddess of Love. Photo by Elena

Among women pregnant for the first time, the authors of the Guadeloupe study found preeclampsia 12 percent of the time, compared with only five percent for those who were pregnant by the same man for a second time. Even more striking, the researchers discovered preeclampsia in 24 percent of the women who had had children before, but were pregnant this time by a new partner.

Delving further, the scientists found that the longer a woman had been sexually intimate with the man who had made her pregnant, the less her risk of preeclampsia.

While little is known about the biological mechanisms that trigger preeclampsia, scientists have established that the placenta fails to attach properly to the uterine lining in such instances. The authors of a study, led by French physician Pierre-Yves Robillard, suspect that preeclampsia may be an adverse immunological reaction by the mother against certain genetic material implanted in the embryo by her partner’s sperm.

This could explain why the placenta does not fully attach to the uterine lining in cases of preeclampsia, resulting in heightened blood pressure in the woman’s late in pregnancy, as her body seeks a way to supply nourishment to the fetus. Based on the Guadeloupe data, the Robillard team hypothesizes that the more exposure a woman has to a partner’s semen before becoming pregnant, the more likely she is to develop an immunity to the man’s genes, thereby reducing her chances of developing preeclampsia.

Not everyone in the medical community agrees with the scientific hunch. Some researchers suggest that the condition is a largely inherited disease, and others say that it may be a response to a lack of protein or too much salt in the mother’s diet. But in any case, the Guadelope study offers intriguing support for the maxim “You dance with the one who brung you.”

A lady in love. Photo by Elena