Improves Maternal Physiology and Cardiovascular Adaptations During Pregnancy
This treatment option provides recombinant relaxin to patients conceiving by Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART), restoring overall cardiovascular conditions during pregnancy. Assisted reproductive technology aims to obtain pregnancy by way of in vitro fertilization of either a couple’s own eggs and sperm or those of donors. ART is associated with higher rates of hypertensive diseases during pregnancy; especially those protocols resulting in an absent corpus luteum. Expecting mothers generally experience changes in overall cardiovascular function, which are initiated at least in part by corpus luteal hormones, such as relaxin, in early pregnancy. Low levels of such corpus luteal hormones can lead to various complications, such as preeclampsia or preeclampsia with severe features. However, no available treatments aim to fully establish physiological conditions among patients using assisted productive technology.
Researchers at the University of Florida have discovered that relaxin helps mediate crucial cardiovascular adaptations, which provides an internal environment that is likely to improve the chances of successful pregnancy. To restore maternal adaptations among assisted pregnancies lacking a corpus luteum, researchers proposed a treatment option for patients to use relaxin or a relaxin analog, thereby enabling mothers conceiving by assisted reproductive technologies to experience physiologic pregnancies and reduced risk for adverse pregnancy outcomes such as preeclampsia.
Application
Use of relaxin or relaxin analogs to initiate normal cardiovascular adaptations in patients conceiving by assisted reproductive technologies in which the corpus luteum is absent
Advantages
- Provides pregnancies assisted by reproductive technology with a recombinant relaxin or relaxin analog-based treatment, normalizing overall maternal physiology and improving pregnancy outcome
- Improves maternal systemic and renal vasodilation and increases in arterial compliance, a fundamental maternal adaptation during pregnancy
- Applies to different types of assisted reproductive technology procedures, in which the hypothalamic-pituitary axis is medically suppressed or when there is ovarian failure, increasing the applicability of this approach to prevent pregnancy complications among these patient populations
- Relaxin administration mitigates both short- and long-term adverse health consequences for mother and child, reducing the risk for preeclampsia with severe features
Technology
Relaxin is a corpus luteal hormone that contributes to crucial cardiovascular, renal and osmoregulatory adaptations during the first half of pregnancy. Women conceiving by donor eggs, in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer, or frozen autologous embryo transfer usually lack circulating relaxin due to the absence of the corpus luteum. These patients therefore fail to optimize their cardiovascular adaptation to pregnancy and experience higher rates of preeclampsia. Relaxin or relaxin analogs could be useful to expecting women without a corpus luteum.
Brochure
