PhD Projects on offer
In vivo effects of antioxidants
on the uterine and umbilical circulations
Supervisor: Dino A Giussani
Pre-eclampsia affects 2-3% of all pregnancies and every year it is responsible for about 60,000 deaths worldwide. In the UK, hypertensive disease in pregnancy is a major cause of maternal death and it is invariably associated with intrauterine growth retardation. The physiological mechanisms underlying the disease are poorly understood, partly because the current overall consensus is that preeclampsia is multi-factorial in nature, involving vascular, genetic, immunological and/or environmental factors. What is generally accepted is that in preeclampsia there is inadequate invasion of the maternal uterine spiral arteries into the placental trophoblast. This may result in poor placental perfusion, promoting placento-fetal hypoxia and leading to the generation of oxidative stress. As such, there is increasing interest into whether antioxidant therapy might help to prevent and/or ameliorate pre-eclampsia, however the direct effects of antioxidants on uterine and umbilical blood flow are completely unknown. In this PhD, you will investigate at different stages of gestation in normal and complicated pregnancy in sheep, the in vivo effects of potent antioxidants, such as vitamin C, vitamin E, allopurinol or melatonin on basal uterine and umbilical blood flow and on the reactivity of these circulations to exogenous vasoconstrictors and dilators.
Group website: http://www.trophoblast.cam.ac.uk/people/giussani.shtml
