Vascular Dysfunction Beyond Pathological Pregnancies. An International Effort Addressed to Fill the Gaps in Latin America, Volume II

This Research Topic is part of the Vascular Dysfunction Beyond Pathological Pregnancies series:
Vascular Dysfunction Beyond Pathological Pregnancies. An International Effort Addressed to Fill the Gaps in Latin America

This article collection has been developed in collaboration with the Red Iberoamericana de alteraciones Vasculares Asociadas a TRastornos del EMbarazo (RIVA-TREM)

Pregnancy is a physiologically stressful condition that generates a series of functional adaptations in the cardiovascular system. The impact of pregnancy on this system persists from conception beyond birth. Recent evidence suggests that vascular changes associated with pregnancy complications, such as preeclampsia; gestational diabetes; growth restriction; autoimmune diseases; among others, affect the function of the maternal and offspring vascular systems, after delivery and may be extended until adult life. Since the vascular system contributes to systemic homeostasis, defective development, or function of blood vessels predisposes both mother and infant to future risk for chronic disease.
In Latin American countries, like any other low (LIC) and middle-income countries (MIC) worldwide, the rate of morbi-mortality due to both pregnancy complications and cardiovascular diseases have a higher incidence than in high-income countries (HIC). But, investigation in LIC and MIC, in particular in Latin America, still falls short of what would be expected considering the magnitude of those diseases. Although there are obvious deficiencies in terms of economies and scientific infrastructure between HIC and MIC or LIC, Latin American strength in terms of scientific productivity in this field could be underestimated due to language limitation and publication in journals not indexed in major citation databases, resulting in low impact publications. Even more, an investigation performed in LIC or MIC receives less citation even if they are published in high impact journals. As a result, we could speculate that potentially unique features of vascular disease associated with pregnancy complications can be unnoted in the global scientific community.

The first volume of our Research Topic had gratefully contributed to overcoming this apparent invisibility (volume I impact) since our scientific production has been viewed more than 32.000 times and increasing downloads from researchers all over the world. Then, we would like to continue encouraging Latin American Researchers in the area of vascular biology to continue contributing in both better understand vascular dysfunction associated with pregnancy diseases and show the gaps in the literature, to finally overcome this hidden effect of our scientific production. This effort also will homogenize clinical concepts and knowledge that may strengthen the scientific effort in Latin America.