Researchers push toward improved care for women with dangerous pregnancy condition
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Graphic depicts a magnetic hyperthermia nanomedicine approach for diagnosing and treating ectopic pregnancy. Credit: Parinaz Ghanbari.
view moreCredit: Credit: Parinaz Ghanbari.
PORTLAND, Ore. – A research team led by an Oregon State University scientist has demonstrated in a mouse model a potentially better way of caring for women facing the life-threatening condition of ectopic pregnancy.
An ectopic pregnancy occurs when a fertilized egg implants somewhere other than the lining of the uterus. Such pregnancies are non-viable and a leading cause of maternal mortality in the first trimester.
The study, primarily funded by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health, was published in the journal Biomaterials.
The research is important because 2% of all pregnancies in the United States, and between 1% and 2% worldwide, are ectopic, the authors note. In the U.S. alone that translates to approximately 100,000 ectopic pregnancies annually; over the past six years, about 30 women have died annually from ectopic pregnancies.
About 98% of ectopic implantations happen in the fallopian tubes, putting women at risk of hemorrhage and death. Complicating matters are a 10% misdiagnosis rate for the standard diagnostic tool, transvaginal ultrasound, and an even higher failure rate for the primary drug, methotrexate, used to end an ectopic pregnancy.
“Current strategies – attempted diagnosis via ultrasound, treatment with methotrexate, and surgery if necessary – are associated with the risk of tubal rupture and reduced fertility,” said Olena Taratula of the OSU College of Pharmacy. “Also, there’s an increased risk of another ectopic pregnancy – a woman who has had one ectopic pregnancy is 10% more likely to have a second one.”
Even when methotrexate – a drug that ends ectopic pregnancy by causing embryonic cells to stop dividing – is effective, it comes with a range of potential side effects, Taratula said: nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, elevated liver enzymes, kidney damage and lung disease.
As a possible alternative, Taratula, postdoctoral scholar Karthickraja Duraisamy and collaborators at Oregon State and Oregon Health & Science University came up with a novel nanomedicine approach. The scientists developed and tested in pregnant mice a new magnetic nanoparticle with both diagnostic and therapeutic functions.
Nanoparticles are tiny pieces of matter, as small as one-billionth of a meter. Administered intravenously, the specially engineered cobalt-doped soft ferromagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles accumulated in the mice’s placenta, which nourishes and maintains the fetus through the umbilical cord.
“Effective detection of the growing placenta greatly improves the accuracy and timeliness of ectopic pregnancy identification,” Olena Taratula said.
Once the nanoparticles were concentrated in the placenta, the organ could be seen through magnetic resonance imaging.
In a human patient, that means it would quickly be clear whether the placenta is where it’s supposed to be. If it is, the patient would know she did not have an ectopic pregnancy, and the embryo is unaffected by the particles as they do not cross the placental barrier.
But if the placenta is in a fallopian tube or other incorrect location, the pregnancy could be ended via non-invasive exposure to an alternating magnetic field, which causes the nanoparticles to rise in temperature and irreparably disrupt placental function via heat.
“We developed an MRI-guided magnetic nanoplatform for localized hyperthermia, less than or equal to 45 degrees Celsius, of pregnancy-associated tissue,” Duraisamy said. “In pregnant mice, it selectively disrupted gestational sacs while preserving surrounding uterine tissue and fertility, supporting its potential as a minimally invasive treatment for ectopic pregnancy.”
“Our main goal in this study was to evaluate our nanoparticle’s ability to identify and visualize the developing placenta and demonstrate its magnetic hyperthermia capabilities,” Taratula added. “These results are highly promising; now in the coming years we need to validate the findings in other animal models to further advance the application of this technology.”
Oleh Taratula, Prem Singh, Akshay Vyawahare, Ana Paula Mesquita Souza and Kongbrailatpam Shitaljit Sharma of Oregon State contributed the research, which was supported by the College of Pharmacy, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the OHSU School of Medicine.
Journal
Biomaterials
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
Animals
Article Title
Nanoparticle-mediated magnetic hyperthermia for ectopic pregnancy treatment
Article Publication Date
21-Sep-2026
COI Statement
The authors declare the following financial interests/personal re- lationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Kentaro Yamada and Khashayar Farsad reports financial support was provided by Dotter Department of Interventional Radiology, Oregon Health & Science University, 3181 S W. Sam Jackson Park Road, Port- land, Oregon, 97,239, USA. Kentaro Yamada reports grants and consulting fees from Kaneka Medical America, GE Healthcare, outside the submitted work. Khashayar Farsad reports grants from Guerbet, LLC, W.L. Gore, and AstraZeneca; consulting fees from BD and W.L. Gore; founder of and equity in Auxetics, Inc, outside the submitted work. All other authors declare no conflict of interest. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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