Pregnant women may soon no longer have to dread that gestational malady known as morning sickness, a condition marked by nausea and throwing up, usually at its worst in the first trimester. In new research published Wednesday in the journal Nature, scientists say they're now focusing on one particular hormone, GDF15, as the cause of the condition, leading to hopes that a cure could be on the horizon. The researchers determined that pregnant women with higher levels of GDF15 in their blood experienced worse symptoms, including the onset of hyperemesis gravidarum, a more serious incarnation of morning sickness that can be severe and last the entire pregnancy.
The Wall Street Journal notes that all of us have GDF15, which is produced in greater amounts by cells under stress. Levels of this hormone tend to rise in the first trimester, though no one was previously sure if it was the mother's cells producing it or the fetus'. Now, says study co-author Stephen O'Rahilly, a University of Cambridge endocrinologist, an examination of the different GDF15 variants have led them to a conclusion. "It's the baby who is making you sick," says O'Rahilly, adding that morning sickness might be an evolutionary protective measure to keep the fetus from being exposed to poisonous substances.
"The placenta is sending a message to mom: Be careful of what you eat," O'Rahilly notes. He and his team also discovered that women who'd had lower levels of GDF15 before they became pregnant tended to do worse with morning sickness, while those who had certain genetic conditions where more GDF15 was present fared better when they eventually became pregnant. The New York Times cites the example of Sri Lankan women with an uncommon blood disorder characterized by high GDF15 levels. Those women almost never go through the first-trimester hell that other women do. "They pretty much have next to zero symptoms in their pregnancies," O'Rahilly says.
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This has all led scientists to hope that intentional exposure to the hormone before pregnancy could perhaps lessen or cut off morning sickness entirely at the pass. Indeed, when this "desensitization" theory was tested on mice, signs looked promising. In addition to that advance exposure, doctors could then work to block GDF15 in pregnant women, though they're still not sure how that would affect the fetus, or block the hormone's receptors, which might be safer overall. A possible cure would be a godsend to the 70% of women in the US who suffer from morning sickness, as well as to the tiny percentage (about 3%) who suffer from the more serious hyperemesis gravidarum, which can prove fatal in extreme cases. "To get to this place where we might be able to prevent and treat this condition, it's huge," co-author Marlena Fejzo tells the Journal. (More morning sickness stories.)
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