If you’ve picked up a tabloid magazine lately, you’ve probably read about Princess Kate’s battle with extreme morning sickness.
It’s a condition called hyperemesis gravidarum, and it sends about 60,000 pregnant women to the hospital each year.
Now one researcher, who had the condition herself, is uncovering clues about this mysterious illness.
Mom-to-be Karin Myers can’t wait to meet her baby boy. She’s only 15 weeks into her pregnancy, but it’s already been a long road.
“Honestly, most days I’m focused on not vomiting,” says Myers.
Karin has hyperemesis gravidarum, HG for short. She vomits almost everything she eats or drinks and is nauseous all day, every day.
“I feel like the joy of pregnancy has been stolen from me,” she says.
Marlena Fejzo, PhD, from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at UCLA, knows the feeling.
She suffered from HG with her first two pregnancies and lost one of the babies.
“In the second pregnancy, I was so ill that I couldn’t even move without vomiting,” says Dr. Fejzo.
Dr. Fejzo couldn’t take another pregnancy so she had a surrogate carry her twin girls.
Now — she’s studying the cause of HG by sequencing the genes of 30 families.
“What it’s looking like to me like it is so far, although you know I’m still in the middle of proving this, is that there are problems in genes involved in liver and kidney health,” says Dr. Fejzo.
She found 20% of women who have HG have a sister who’s had it and 30% have a mom who’s had it.
The condition puts babies at risk for mental health disorders later in life.
Moms are more likely to suffer post-partum depression.
Fejzo says she wants people to know this is a serious condition.
“We have women in our study that have had their retinas detached or their eardrums burst or their esophagus tears or rib fractures from the violent vomiting.”
She’s hoping her research will one day spare moms-to-be, including her own daughters, from suffering like she did.
Fejzo says that about 15% of pregnant women with HG choose to terminate their babies and 37% decide not to have any more children.
There’s about an 85% chance that a woman will have the condition in future pregnancies if she’s already had it.
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