GenPE (International study of genetics and Preeclampsia)

Web site for the cohort:

Publications describing the cohort:

Description:
GenPE Project is led by the Research team “Estudio Genético de Enfermedades Complejas” at the Universidad Autónoma de Bucaramanga and works in association with the London School of Hygiene and tropical Medicine and the University College London, both from the United Kingdom, as well as with other Colombian Universities. GenPE Project is a great scale genetic association study, which intends to determine some genetics markers that could conduce to the developing of Preeclampsia. Knowing which genes are implied in its pathogenesis will allow us, in a mediate future to predict the development of the disease and possibly to improve the prevention and treatment strategies, and in this way to reduce the maternal and child deaths due to this disease. The final purpose of this project is the recruitment of a total of 4000 women with preeclampsia and 4000 control women. We planned to obtain genetic material of 2000 newborns from preeclamptic mothers and the equal number of newborns from the healthy pregnant women, becoming a unique world resource for the study of the etiologic factors (genetics and no genetics) of preeclampsia. To April 2008, a total of 1600 cases (preeclamptic women) and 2138 controls (healthy pregnant women) have been recruited. These amount of DNA and serum samples from our patients, have been recognized as a valuable source for the study of the causal factors of preeclampsia. As a sample of this, we have been funded by the Wellcome Trust for conducting a Genome-Wide-Association Analysis, as an initial phase of our project, which corresponds to the analysis of 2000 cases and 2000 controls. In the same way, the GenPE project research team is conducting Mendelian-Randomization studies for judge the causality and possible therapeutic value of some associated factors with the development of preeclampsia, between them are some inflammatory, metabolic, vascular and angiogenic biomarkers.

Types of tissue collected: serum and DNA samples