Normal Pregnancies in Women with Recurrent Molar Pregnancies
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Investigation of Normal Pregnancies in Women with Recurrent Molar Pregnancies
IRAS ID
185642
Contact name
A Fisher
Contact email
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 11 months, 31 days
Research summary
A molar pregnancy is an abnormal pregnancy in which the placenta grows very rapidly and the baby fails to develop or is so abnormal it cannot survive. These usually occur by chance, because something goes wrong at the time of conception and these women go on to have normal pregnancies. Occasionally women have repeated molar pregnancies and rarely have normal babies. This is caused by the patient having an abnormality in a gene, NLRP7 or KHDC3L, that is important for controlling other genes involved in the normal development of pregnancy.
In order to try and help women with recurrent molar pregnancies achieve a normal pregnancy we need to understand how abnormalities in these specific genes result in a molar, rather than a normal, pregnancy. To do this we wish to compare the expression of genes, which are likely to be important for normal development of the placenta and fetus, in the molar pregnancies and the occasional normal pregnancy experienced by women with recurrent molar pregnancies. For the molar tissue we would use tissue that remained following histopathological diagnosis and for the normal pregnancy, saliva samples from normal children of affected women.
Initially we would investigate “imprinted” genes, that is genes where only the copy inherited from our mother or the copy from our father is functional as we, and others, have already shown that some of these genes are expressed abnormally in molar pregnancies. By comparing the methylation profiles of genes in the molar and normal pregnancy we will be able to determine whether genes are functional or are switched off and identify genes important for the development of normal pregnancies. This would help us better understand the function of the genes mutated in women with recurrent molar pregnancies and how they can sometimes achieve a normal pregnancy.REC name
South West - Central Bristol Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/SW/0245
Date of REC Opinion
7 Aug 2015
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion