Abstract
Evaluation of: Woods AK, Hoffmann DS, Weydert CJ et al. Adenoviral delivery of VEGF121 early in pregnancy prevents spontaneous development of preeclampsia in BPH/5 mice. Hypertension 57(1), 94–102 (2011).
Preeclampsia is a pregnancy-specific hypertension characterized by proteinuria and maternal endothelial dysfunction. Recent research has focused on the balance of pro- and anti-angiogenic factors in the development of the disorder, specifically the proteins VEGF, PlGF, sFlt-1 and sEng. In a recent paper, Woods et al. demonstrated that administration of adenovirally delivered VEGF attenuates the pathological features of preeclampsia that are present in a novel murine model of the disorder, the BPH/5 mouse. This is a recent addition to a body of literature that suggests an important role for VEGF bioavailability in the maintenance of a healthy endothelium during pregnancy, and suggests an intriguing target for the development of new therapeutics for the treatment of preeclampsia.
Financial & competing interests disclosure
This work was supported by NIH grants 1T32HL105324 and HL51971. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.
No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.