Understanding Birth Defects in Pregnancies With Pre-Existing Diabetes
INTERVIEW ON THE PRICE OF BUSINESS SHOW, MEDIA PARTNER OF THIS SITE.
Recently Kevin Price, Host of the nationally syndicated Price of Business Show, interviewed Mary Loeken.
On a recent Price of Business show, Host Kevin Price interviewed Mary Loeken, Ph.D. They discussed her research to understand how birth defects can occur in pregnancies with pre-existing diabetes. Since 1988, Mary has been a Research Investigator at the Joslin Diabetes Center and is an associate professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. It has long been known that birth defects, especially cardiac and neural tube defects, are significantly increased in the babies of women with diabetes. Advances in diabetes care have reduced this risk, but it is still 2-4 times higher than in nondiabetic pregnancies. Until recently, how these malformations occur was not understood. As a basic research scientist, Mary wanted to study this clinically-important problem. Her laboratory developed a mouse model of diabetic pregnancy. They showed that when the mother’s blood glucose (sugar) levels are high, there is increased glucose transport into embryo cells. Mary’s lab has elucidated several biochemical and molecular signaling pathways by which the glucose interferes with the instructions from embryo genes that control organ formation. These findings indicate that strategies to keep the pregnant person’s blood glucose levels within a normal range in early pregnancy are important to reduce the risk of birth defects.
Learn more at https://joslin.org/find-an-expert/mary-loeken-phd.
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