Disturbances in maternal steroidogenesis and appearance of intrauterine growth retardation at high-altitude environments are established from early pregnancy. Effects of treatment with antioxidant vitamins

Pregnancies at high-altitudes are influenced by hypoxia and oxidative stress and frequently affected by IUGR. However, a common thought is that early pregnant women visiting altitude have no major complications for gestation development, since IUGR is developed during the second half of pregnancy. Thus, using a well-characterized sheep-model, we aimed to determine whether long-and/or short-term exposure to high-altitude may affect maternal steroidogenesis and therefore embryo-fetal growth from conception. The second aim was to differentiate the relative role of hypoxia and oxidative stress by assessing the effects of supplementation with antioxidant agents during this early-pregnancy stage, which were previously found to be useful to prevent IUGR. The results indicate that both long- and shortterm exposure to high-altitude causes disturbances in maternal ovarian steroidogenesis and negatively affects embryo-fetal growth already during the very early stages of gestation, with the consequences being even worsened in newcomers to high-altitude. The supply of antioxidant during this period only showed discrete effects for preventing IUGR. In conclusion, the present study gives a warning for clinicians about the risks for early-pregnant women when visiting high-altitude regions and suggests the need for further studies on the effects of the length of exposure and on the interaction of the exposure with the pregnancy stage. © 2015 Parraguez et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Bibliographic Details

Main Authors:	Parraguez, V. H., Mamani, S., Cofré, E., Castellaro, G., Urquieta, B., De Los Reyes, M., Astiz Blanco, Susana María, González De Bulnes, Antonio
Format:	artículo biblioteca
Language:	English
Published:	Public Library of Science 2015
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12792/3328 http://hdl.handle.net/10261/290739
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