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Menstrual Health Tied to Pregnancy Complications?

2025-04-17 - 2025-04

Women early in their pregnancy are being recruited for a study looking into the link between their menstrual symptoms and pregnancy complications including preterm birth, fetal growth restriction (FGR) and stillbirth.
Hudson Institute perinatal epidemiologist Associate Professor Miranda Davies-Tuck has developed and is leading the research program 'Your period, your pregnancy' - a collaboration between Monash Health, Hudson Institute of Medical Research and Monash University - School of Clinical Sciences at Monash Health.
She hopes to recruit 1,104 pregnant women by early next year and that all the participants will have given birth by the end of 2026.
The study aims to discover new causes that may result in challenges for mum and baby during pregnancy and lead to new treatments to support a healthier pregnancy.
"Current discovery research aimed at better understanding and preventing stillbirth focuses almost exclusively on the role of the placenta." A/Prof Davies-Tuck said. "This is because the placenta is implicated in up to 65% of stillbirths and leads to the most common causes of stillbirth, preterm birth and fetal growth restriction."
Exploring links between menstrual health and pregnancy
"The origins of poor placental function, however, are poorly understood. There is growing evidence that the endometrial environment in which the embryo implants and the placenta develops is essential to determining the trajectory of pregnancy."
Excitingly, characteristics of a woman's menstrual cycle could be used as a new clinical tool." she said.
A/Prof Davies-Tuck said a third of the sample size has been recruited at Monash Health antenatal clinics.
The participants are women aged 18 to 45 with a singleton pregnancy (one fetus) who do not have a known diagnosed endometrial pathology such as endometriosis, adenomyosis, endometrial cancer or an endometrial submucosal fibroid or have had an endometrial ablation, which is a surgical procedure that reduces or stops heavy menstrual bleeding.
The women will complete a menstrual history survey to record their menstrual cycle length, regularity, level of pain, heaviness of flow, and other symptoms.
The primary outcomes sought for the study are stillbirth, spontaneous preterm birth, pre-eclampsia or fetal growth restriction.
Participants are also invited to complete an optional fetal movements survey between 28 to 32, and 36 plus weeks' gestation. Consent for placental collection at the time of birth will also be sought.

Maternal exposure to phthalates during pregnancy can affect newborn's metabolism and brain development: Study

2025-04-18 - 2025-04

A newly published study by researchers from Emory University, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Columbia University found that a mother's exposure to phthalates during pregnancy can affect their newborn's metabolism and brain development.
Phthalates are a group of widely used plasticizers commonly found in a variety of cosmetics and personal care products, such as shampoos, soaps, and detergents, as well as plastic food and beverage containers. Previous research showed phthalates can affect hormones and suggested they may be linked to health effects in mothers and babies.
The study, led by researchers at Emory's Rollins School of Public Health and published in Nature Communications on Wednesday, was the first to explore and find evidence of how a pregnant woman's exposure to phthalates influences their baby's metabolism at birth.
Main Takeaways
Prenatal phthalate levels in the mother's blood during pregnancy were associated with lower levels of key neurotransmitter precursors (related to tyrosine and tryptophan metabolism) important for brain development in the newborn's blood soon after birth.
Higher prenatal phthalate levels were also associated with biological changes linked to lower information processing (or attention) and excitability (or arousal) scores in newborns.
These findings suggest that a mother's exposure to phthalates during pregnancy may influence her newborn's metabolism soon after birth. Furthermore, exposure to phthalates while babies are still in the uterus may also have lasting effects on infant brain development.
What The Experts Say
"This was the first study to demonstrate that a mother's exposure to phthalates can impact their baby's metabolome and also the first to show that these biological changes can impact newborn development. This is important because there is a common belief that the placenta protects the baby from a lot of harmful substances, but this study supports that phthalates are able to cross through the placenta and actually impact the baby's biology before they are even born and negatively affect their development over time," said Susan Hoffman, PhD, study first author and recent graduate of the Epidemiology PhD program at the Rollins School of Public Health.
"We are seeing that once pregnant women are exposed to phthalates, these chemicals not only enter their body and disrupt maternal metabolism, but these exposures also impact the metabolism and neurobehavioral functioning of newborns. And we found these substances are staying with them in the body after they are born, as we did see some indication of a biological disruption occurring among the newborn babies that has a further impact on the neurodevelopment system," says Donghai Liang, PhD, study lead author and associate professor of environmental health at the Rollins School of Public Health.

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Menstrual Health Tied to Pregnancy Complications?

Maternal exposure to phthalates during pregnancy can affect newborn's metabolism and brain development: Study