This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: A research team led by an Oregon State University scientist has demonstrated in a mouse model a potentially better way to care for women facing the life-threatening condition of ectopic pregnancy. An ectopic pregnancy occurs when a fertilized egg implants somewhere other than the lining of the uterus.
Such pregnancies are nonviable and a leading cause of maternal mortality in the first trimester. The study was published in the journal Biomaterials. The research is important because 2% of all pregnancies in the United States, and between 1% and 2% worldwide, are ectopic, the authors note.
In the U.S. alone, that translates to approximately 100,000 ectopic pregnancies annually; over the past six years, about 30 women have died annually from ectopic pregnancies. About 98% of ectopic implantations happen in the fallopian tubes, putting women at risk of hemorrhage and death. Complicating matters are a 10% misdiagnosis rate for the standard diagnostic tool, transvaginal ultrasound, and an even higher failure rate for the primary drug, methotrexate, used to end an ectopic pregnancy.
"Current strategies—attempted diagnosis via ultrasound, treatment with methotrexate, and surgery if necessary—are associated with the risk of tubal rupture and reduced fertility," said Olena Taratula of the OSU College of Pharmacy. "Also, there's an increased risk of another ectopic pregnancy—a woman who has had one ectopic pregnancy is 10% more likely to have a second one." Even when methotrexate—a drug that ends an ectopic pregnancy by causing embryonic cells to stop dividing—is effective, it comes with a range of potential side effects, Taratula said, including nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, elevated liver enzymes, kidney damage and lung disease. As a possible alternative, Taratula, postdoctoral scholar Karthickraja Duraisamy and collaborators at Oregon State and Oregon Health & Science University came up with a novel nanomedicine approach.
The scientists developed and tested in pregnant mice a new magnetic nanoparticle with both diagnostic and therapeutic functions. Nanoparticles are tiny pieces of matter, as small as one-billionth of a meter. Administered intravenously, the specially engineered cobalt-doped soft ferromagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles accumulated in the mice's placenta, which nourishes and maintains the fetus through the umbilical cord.
"Effective detection of the growing placenta greatly improves the accuracy and timeliness of ectopic pregnancy identification," Taratula said. Once the nanoparticles were concentrated in the placenta, the organ could be seen through magnetic resonance imaging. In a human patient, that means it would quickly be clear whether the placenta is where it's supposed to be.
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