WEHI Wednesday Seminar hosted by Professor Sant-Rayn Pasricha

Dr Katherine Fielding MBBS BMedSci FRACP FRCPA

PhD Student – Pasricha Laboratory

Population Health & Immunity Division – Healthy Development & Ageing Theme, WEHI

Clinical Haematologist

Improving maternal iron in pregnancy: from bench to bedside

 

Davis Auditorium

Join via SLIDO enter code #WEHIWednesday

Including Q&A session
 

Iron deficiency anaemia is a global health priority, estimated to affect over a billion people worldwide. Pregnancy is a time of particularly high iron requirements, with serious consequences of anaemia for both mother and baby. The key driver of iron physiology is Hepcidin. Despite its critical importance to the altered iron physiology of pregnancy, the regulation of hepcidin in pregnancy is poorly understood.

In this project, I began by exploring hepcidin regulation in mouse pregnancy using different iron conditions. In particular, for the first time in a mouse pregnancy, I have been able to inhibit Tmprss6, a critical component of the hepcidin regulatory pathway. Next, I leveraged a human pregnancy cohort to examine hepcidin regulation and its change after a iron intervention. The REVAMP study was a randomised controlled trial of intravenous ferric carboxymaltose (or standard of care oral iron), delivered to anaemic pregnant women in Malawi. I led a longitudinal substudy across nearly 500 women throughout pregnancy and postpartum, to examine the effects of intravenous iron on hepcidin.

Finally, I report results of a project that was used to define statistical haemoglobin thresholds for anaemia across the lifecycle. This work was presented to the WHO and resulted in change to guidance regarding reference ranges for anaemia in children, allowing harmonisation of existing varied thresholds, and impacting the health assessment of millions of people worldwide.

All welcome!