Director's Seminar - Asthma and Pregnancy: Adverse outcomes and susceptibility to air pollution

NIH Director's Seminar Series Dr. Mendola is a reproductive epidemiologist with a long-standing interest in environmental influences on reproductive health. She came to NICHD in 2011 after serving as a researcher and branch chief at the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Center for Health Statistics. Dr. Mendola ’ s research is designed to answer clinically relevant questions related to poor pregnancy outcomes for women with chronic disease, with a particular focus on maternal asthma and ambient air pollution exposure. She built on her past work on air pollution and pregnancy outcomes, developing an intramural research focus on the interplay of immune function (asthma, allergy, maternal-fetal tolerance) and air pollution during pregnancy. Dr. Mendola leads the Air Quality and Reproductive Health study which combines state-of-the-art modified Community Multi-scale Air Quality model data with data from the Consortium on Safe Labor, the Longitudinal Investigation of Fertility and the Environment study and the NICHD Consecutive Pregnancies study. Her major findings show a differential increase in preterm birth and preeclampsia experienced by asthmatic mothers after exposure to traffic-related pollutants such as nitrogen oxides compared to non-asthmatics. Her team also found that infants of mothers with asthma were more likely to have respiratory morbidity themselves including higher risk for respiratory distress syndrome and transient tachypnea of the newborn. Her...
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