Long-term impact of tetrahydrobiopterin availability during preeclamptic pregnancies on offspring vascular and cardiac development

Research summary

Women who develop blood pressure problems during pregnancy are more likely to have high blood pressure (hypertension) in later life as well as heart attacks or strokes. The children born to the pregnancy also tend to have higher blood pressure and are often at increased risk of heart and blood vessel disease later in life. Our work has shown that children born to pregnancies where the mother has high blood pressure have changes in their blood vessels, heart and brain that can be measured long before they develop high blood pressure or other clinical symptoms. By understanding the pattern of changes across multiple parts of the body, over a lifetime, we can identify how advanced the underlying disease is for an individual and how their disease is likely to develop over the next few years. We now plan to study whether a molecule which has a role in blood vessel health, known as tetrahydrobiopterin (BH4), may determine postnatal cardiovascular health. We will follow up offspring from a randomised oral supplementation trial of an active form of folate to determine whether BH4 pathway modification during pregnancy can improve offspring blood vessel and cardiovascular health. Mothers who previously participated in the CAREFOL-HT trial (21/WA/0169) will be asked to provide consent to link their individual data from CAREFOL-HT to this study, providing us with a rich data and sample resource that can be linked to this new study.

Principal Investigator

Prof Paul Leeson

Contact us

Email: cvm_nurses@cardiov.ox.ac.uk

IRAS number

338871