Recent epidemiological data have implicated prenatal events in the development of cardiovascular disorders. Thus low birth weight strongly predicts the later occurrence of hypertension, type II diabetes mellitus, syndrome X and deaths from ischaemic heart disease. The mechanism linking prenatal events and later disease is not clear, although maternal malnutrition has been advocated. We have advanced the hypothesis that glucocorticoids might be important as they retard foetal growth and programme offspring hypertension in rats. The foetus has been thought to be protected from the 2-10 times higher maternal glucocorticoid levels by the placental enzyme 11B-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase (11B-HSD), which is present in many tissues and in humans catalyses the conversion of the active glucocorticoid cortisol to inert cortisone (corticosterone to 11-dehydrocorticosterone in rats). The precise role of 11B-HSD as a barrier to maternal glucocorticoids during prenatal life has not been fully characterised. The role of 11B-HSD in controlling prenatal glucocorticoid exposure in humans and animals has thus been examined. Two isoforms of 11B-HSD exist, type 1, a widespread NADP dependent reversible enzyme and type 2, a high affinity NAD dependent dehydrogenase found mainly in placenta and kidney. 11B-HSD was found in abundance in the ovary and placenta. The main site of immunohistochemical staining and expression of mRNA (11B-HSD-1) in the rat ovary was in the oocyte. 11B-HSD was oxidative, inactivating corticosterone. In both rat placenta in-vitro (11B-HSD-2), and human placenta in-vitro and ex-vivo (11B-HSD-2) the bioactivity was also predominantly oxidative. The lowest placental enzyme activity at term (and hence the greatest foetal glucocorticoid exposure) was found in the smallest rats with the largest placentas, i.e. those in human studies who would be predicted to develop the highest adult blood pressures (birth weight vs. placental 11B-HSD activity: n = 56; r = 0.46; p < 0.0005). A method to examine 11B-HSD function in fresh intact human placentas was developed (ex-vivo dual circuit cotyledon perfusion) which allows close approximation to the in-vivo situation. The majority of cortisol, from low to high nanomolar concentrations, infused through the maternal circulation was metabolised to inert cortisone by the time it reached the foetal circulation, although considerable individual variation was observed. 118-HSD was the only significant contributor to placental cortisol metabolism at physiological maternal concentrations and inhibition of 118-HSD with either the liquorice constituent glycyrrhetinic acid or its hemi-succinate, carbenoxolone, resulted in abolition of the glucocorticoid barrier, allowing maternally administered cortisol to pass unmetabolised through the placenta. In a prospective study, on 16 normal primiparous women whose placentas were studied with this technique, a positive and significant correlation was found between the effectiveness of 118-HSD and offspring birth weight (r = 0. 67; p < 0. 005). The relationship between placental 118-HSD effectiveness in-vivo and term cord blood osteocalcin (a sensitive marker of glucocorticoid exposure) was prospectively examined in 19 women. Cord blood levels of the bone specific protein osteocalcin were determined with radioimmunoassay. The lowest cord blood osteocalcin levels were found in the foetuses whose placental 118-HSD barrier function was poorest (r = 0.58; p < 0.02), (and had presumably had the greatest glucocorticoid exposure), suggesting that term cord blood osteocalcin levels might be a useful predictor of hypertension, ischaemic heart disease and possibly metabolic bone disease. The findings presented in this thesis represent direct evidence that 118-HSD is the barrier to maternal glucocorticoids, its effectiveness correlating with foetal growth in rats (in-vitro), in humans (ex-vivo), and in-vivo with human cord blood osteocalcin levels (osteocalcin may be a marker of glucocorticoid exposure). In the light of studies on pregnant rats in which administration of exogenous glucocorticoids or 118-HSD inhibitors reduces birth weight and programmes hypertension in the offspring, it is reasonable to propose that increased foetal glucocorticoid exposure consequent upon attenuated placental 118-HSD function may play a role in intrauterine programming of later hypertension.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:619273 |
| Date | January 1995 |
| Creators | Benediktsson, Rafn |
| Contributors | Seckl, Jonathan R. ; Edwards, Christopher R. W. |
| Publisher | University of Edinburgh |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/1842/9683 |
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