Preeclampsia and sperm exposure

Children may be at a slightly increased risk of schizophrenia when their parents were in sexual contact for less than three years before conceiving them, according to research conducted at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published April 23 in the journal Schizophrenia Research. Schizophrenia is a chronic and severe mental disorder that affects how a person thinks, feels, and behaves. People with schizophrenia may seem to have lost touch with reality and may suffer from hallucinations, delusions, disordered thinking, negative mood, and cognitive impairments. Previous research has shown that preeclampsia, the most common pregnancy complication involving placental inflammation, is associated with developmental abnormalities in offspring that predispose them to a two- to four-fold increase in the risk for schizophrenia. Research has also shown that a lengthy period of prepregnancy vaginal exposure to the sperm of the offspring's father can overcome the maternal intolerance to paternal antigens that is a risk factor for preeclampsia. We anticipate that this work will inspire many follow-up studies to examine this disease pathway.

A report of new research, now in press at the Journal of Reproductive Immunology , documents how two distinct risk factors combine to affect the odds that a first-time mother could develop the sometimes life-threatening pregnancy complication. The findings suggest there could be new ways to plan pregnancy with improved awareness and management of the risk. The new study, first published online in August, measured both of those risk factors in detail and in combination in women who developed preeclampsia and in similar women who did not. The analysis accounted for other risk factors, such as Body Mass Index. The increased odds appear to confirm prior studies that have suggested a higher risk of preeclampsia from a high degree of similarity among HLA genes in the mother and father, and, independently, higher levels of pre-pregnancy semen exposure. Co-author Audrey Saftlas led another study, online Aug. In other words, unlike a transplanted organ that is most readily accepted if HLA genes are very similar, a fetus will be welcome if it appears genetically distinct.

Abstract Preeclampsia is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in mothers, fetuses and neonates worldwide. We conducted a case-control study on preeclamptic women Case Group and normotensive pregnant women Control Group to investigate that if preconception period of seminal fluid exposure affects the prevalence of preeclampsia in primigravida women. Our data suggest that prevalence of preeclampsia in primigravida women is associated with weekly number of coitus before conception and the use of barrier contraceptive method. The cause is still uncertain and many controversies exist concerning its management. The etiology of preeclampsia remains unknown, but the primigravida adolescent as such as multigravida older women whom have conceived with a new sexual partner have a greater risk; this has been associated also with the use of barrier contraceptive methods that prevent exposure to sperm with the endometrial cavity condoms, diaphragms, spermicides, withdrawal Gutman et al.