Assessing autonomic dysregulation to identify high-risk pregnancies
During a healthy pregnancy, the mother’s body is continuously adapting to the growing needs of the maternal-fetal pair. These changes are in large part facilitated by the autonomic nervous system (ANS). However, in approximately 15% of pregnancies, maternal physiology is not able to appropriately adapt, resulting in pregnancy complications such as hypertensives disorders of pregnancy or gestational diabetes which result in perinatal morbidity and mortality. Correspondingly, such complications are associated with abnormal regulation by the ANS when compared to healthy pregnancies.

Detecting pregnancy complications early, i.e., before the onset of typical symptoms, would allow for the implementation of existing risk-mitigating interventions, which lessens the impact of these complications. Assessing autonomic regulation – which can be done via tracking heart rate variability (HRV) – may hold potential for the early detection of these complications. Subsequently, in our work, we investigate the feasibility of using HRV to track maternal health. We address the following topics, amongst others: the differences in autonomic regulation between pregnant and non-pregnant women, the factors (e.g., gestational age, parity) that affect maternal HRV, and the HRV features potentially best suited for detecting these complications.

Bio

Maretha Bester is a final year PhD candidate in the Biomedical Diagnostics research group at the Electrical Engineering department of the Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands. Her work focuses on improving maternal health by finding ways to better detect pregnancy complications. This work is done in collaboration with Philips Research in Eindhoven and the Máxima Medical Center in Veldhoven, both in the Netherlands. Prior to her PhD research, she attained her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechatronic engineering at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, where her master’s research focused on assessing the breathing patterns of premature infants.
Date: 1 November 2022, 13:00 (Tuesday, 4th week, Michaelmas 2022)
Venue: This event will be hybrid. It will take place on Zoom and in-person attendance will take place in the Anne Anderson Lecture Theatre
Speaker: Maretha Bester (Eindhoven University of Technology)
Organising department: Nuffield Department of Women's and Reproductive Health
Organisers: Dr Lydia Coxon (NDWRH, University of Oxford), Dr Wei Zhang (NDWRH, University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address: seminars@wrh.ox.ac.uk
Booking required?: Recommended
Booking email: seminars@wrh.ox.ac.uk
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Danielle Hoare