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One of the things that
became evident right away was that even though reduced placental perfusion is definitely
linked to preeclampsia, it didn’t seem like it was enough to explain the disease,
because there are babies with IUGR, Inter-Uterine Growth Restriction, small babies who
obviously haven’t exercised their growth potential. This has to suggest that they
didn’t have adequate perfusion to the placenta, but not all their mothers had
preeclampsia. In fact, if you look at babies of women who had preeclampsia, only about one
third of them are growth-restricted. Interestingly, conditions that lead to big babies,
insulin resistance and obesity, increase risk of preeclampsia. Probably most importantly,
abnormal implantation doesn’t occur only in preeclampsia; you can see it with
growth-restricted babies in about one third of preterm births. So this lead to the
suggestion reduced placental perfusion isn’t sufficient to do anything unless there’s
a maternal contribution. |