Placental development in a mild and moderate model of maternal chronic hypertension

Chronic hypertension complicates approximately 5% of pregnancies. Current evidence suggests that pregnancies complicated by hypertension might be at an increased risk of developing adult diseases, a phenomenon known an intrauterine programming. It has been previously shown that offspring from rabbit mothers with mild hypertension have increased blood pressure as adults.  The placenta plays a crucial role in fetal development. Complications that occur during hypertensive pregnancies are thought to be associated with poor placental development and 

function. Thus placental changes associated with maternal hypertension may be implicated in the pathogenesis of intrauterine programming.  The aims of this thesis were to describe the normal pattern of development of structural 

correlates of placental function and placental gene expression of components of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) and 11 (3-Hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 2 (1IP-HSD2) in the rabbit; and determine the effect of hypertension on structural correlates of placental function, gene expression and utero-placental blood flow.

This thesis was scanned from the print manuscript for digital preservation and is copyright the author. 

Author requested conversion to open access 23 Jan 2023