Grant: Project Grant

About 1 in 20 pregnant women will develop gestational diabetes. Gestational diabetes is a condition where women develop high blood sugar in the late stages of pregnancy. This high blood sugar usually improves after delivery however these women are at increased risk of pregnancy complications as well as risk of developing heart and blood vessel disease later in life. The purpose of this study is to see if there is damage to the blood vessels from gestational diabetes that may contribute to heart disease. We will use an innovative rodent model of gestational diabetes to test the short term and long-term impact of gestational diabetes on blood vessel function. In addition. we will use a new test which looks at pieces of blood vessel cells to determine whether there is blood vessel damage in human gestational diabetes. We will determine whether blood vessel extracellular vesicles are increased in gestational diabetes, and determine what factors are linked to increased extracellular vesicles, and finally look at what is inside the extracellular vesicles to understand what is happening to the blood vessels during gestational diabetes.