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Objective— The investigation of the histology of the placental bed spiral arteries in normal pregnancy and in pregnancies complicated by hypertension, with or without proteinura. Design— An observational study, based on women having caesarean sections for clinical reasons. Subjects— 17 normal pregnant women, 43 with gestational hypertension, of whom 39 had proteinuria, 17 with chronic hypertension, of whom 6 had proteinuria, and 5 with unclassified hypertension. Interventions— Placental bed biopsies obtained during caesarean section. Main outcome measures— Histological appearance of sections stained with haematoxylin and eosin PAS and Lendrum's MSB. Results— Biopsies containing spiral arteries were obtained from 6 normotensive and 44 hypertensive women. Trophoblastic invasion was present in 5 of the 6 normotensive biopsies but absent in the majority of those with hypertension. Subintimal proliferation was seen in all the normotensive biopsies but in only 8 of 28 from those with gestational hypertension and proteinuria. Other features seen predominantly or only in the hypertensive biopsies, in order of frequency, were medial hyperplasia, fibrin deposits, acute atherosis, endothelial vacuolation and thrombosis. Conclusion— Absence of physiological changes may not be peculiar to preeclampsia but may be associated or even a result of various forms of hypertension in pregnancy. Spiral arteries show a spectrum of changes in hypertensive pregnancies that do not appear to bear a clear‐cut relation to the clinical signs.

The DALI Lifestyle Study Context: Lifestyle approaches for preventing gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) have produced mixed results. Objective: The aim of this study was to compare the effectiveness of three lifestyle interventions (Healthy eating (HE), Physical activity (PA) and both HE and PA (HE+PA)) with usual care (UC) in reducing GDM risk. Design: Multicentre Randomised Controlled Trial 2012-2014: The Dali Lifestyle Study Setting: Antenatal clinics across 11 centres in 9 European countries Patients: Consecutive pregnant women <20 weeks gestation with a BMI≥29 kg/m 2 and without GDM by IADPSG criteria (n=436).Intervention: Women were randomized, stratified by site, to Control, HE, PA or HE+PA. Women received 5 face-to-face and up to 4 telephone coaching sessions, based on the principles of motivational interviewing. Gestational weight gain (GWG) <5kg was targeted. Coaches received standardized training and an intervention toolkit tailored to their culture/language. Main outcome measures: GWG at 35-37 weeks, fasting glucose and insulin sensitivity (HOMA-IR) at 24-28 weeks. Results: We randomized 108 women to HE&PA, 113 to HE, 110 to PA and 105 to UC. In the HE+PA group, but not HE or PA alone, women achieved substantially less GWG than controls by 35-37 weeks . Despite this reduction there were no improvements in fasting or post-load glucose or,insulin concentrations or HOMA-IR. Birthweight, large and small for gestational age rates were similar. Copyright 2016 DOI: 10.1210/jc.2016 Conclusions: The combined HE+PA intervention was able to limit GWG but did not reduce fasting glycaemia. Lifestyle change alone is unlikely to prevent GDM among women with a BMI≥29 kg/m 2 .PRECIS: We studied pregnant women in a large European multi-centre RCT of physical activity and/or healthy eating and found no effect on GDM risk in spite of significant gestational weight gain limitation INTRODUCTIONGestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), high pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI) and gestational weight gain (GWG) are independently associated with an increased risk of adverse perinatal outcomes, including macrosomia, operative delivery and shoulder dystocia (1). In GDM, such complications have a continuous relationship with maternal glucose concentrations during the oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) (2). With the increasing prevalence of obesity in pregnancy and GDM (3), it has become increasingly important to develop evidence based clinical interventions that prevent the development of GDM and minimise excess GWG. The development of type 2 diabetes through intensive lifestyle interventions can be reduced by 58% over 4 years in non-pregnant women who have previously had GDM (4). However, whether GDM can be prevented through antenatal lifestyle interventions, even with limitation in excess GWG, is disputed (5). RCTs have provided variable evidence that lifestyle interventions 'work' (6); likely because of different intervention protocols and study populations. Furthermore, at the moment, no studies are available that assessed, ...

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