Women who live in America’s mountain state are helping British researchers investigate new ways of dealing with oxygen deprivation during birth.
Mountaineering researcher Dr Andrew Murray is important placentas from Colorado, USA, to discover how women have adapted to giving birth in a low oxygen environment.
The mothers have had their babies in the town of Leadville, which is 3,100 metres high – more than one third the height of Everest.
Dr Murray says pregnant women in high altitudes face greater risks than others – with increased problems of poor growth of babies and of pre-eclampsia.
But many have healthy pregnancies – and the researchers want to find out how they adapt in pregnancy to the shortage of oxygen.
The researchers have developed new techniques to preserve and freeze placentas so they can be shipped to the UK.
Dr Murray, who is backed by the children’s charity Action Medical Research, said: "Some of these mothers do successfully adapt and we want to learn not only what effect low oxygen has, but also how a normal altitude placenta might adapt to low oxygen as well."
Dr Murray experience includes conducting research at the base camp of Everest to study the heart and muscles.
* A major transatlantic collaboration is announced today between the UK stem cell bank and the University of Massachusetts Medical School, USA.
The two institutions will work together to develop common standards for stem cells and to develop lines of cells for research and potential medical use.
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