Online PhD conferral mr. Philippe Vangrieken

Key words: placenta, hypoxia, preeclampsia, hypertension, mitochondria, toxicity

"Placental hypoxia: vascular and mitochondrial toxicity"

Preeclampsia is a complex hypertensive disorder affecting seemingly healthy pregnant women and is associated with impaired placental oxygen supply resulting in hypoxia and oxidative stress. Despite significant research, preeclampsia continues to affect 10 million pregnant women and kills 76,000 mothers and 500,000 babies per year worldwide. This thesis provides a set of identified parameters related to placental maturity that can be used to identify more subtypes of preeclampsia, which subsequently will help in more directed clinical management and in the prevention of recurrence of preeclampsia during a next pregnancy. New insights were created into the contribution of mitochondria in mediating oxidative stress in preeclampsia- or hypoxia-complicated placentae. Furthermore, the understanding of the interplay between a preeclampsia- or hypoxic-complicated placenta and the subsequent development of hypertension in the mother was improved.