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| Risk Factors and Causes | Molar pregnancy is not a common phenomenon; however, this can happen to anyone. Still, there are some risk factors identified, but even if a person with these risk factors; the chance of having a molar pregnancy remains very low.
So, to risk factors belong the following ones:
• Geographic location. It is interesting enough; however, the incidence of molar pregnancies varies depending on where a woman lives. In the USA about 1 of every 1,000 pregnancies is molar, however, in Southeast Asia molar pregnancies occur about 8 times more often;
• Age. Women, who are either over 40 or under 20, are considered to be at the highest risk for a complete molar pregnancy;
• Suffering from a molar pregnancy before. In accordance with some investigations, the chance of having another molar pregnancy is about 2 out of 100;
• Having a history of miscarriage.
• Blood type. A woman with blood type A or AB and is more likely to suffer from a molar pregnancy with possible choriocarcinoma;
• Taking of birth control pills;
• Women, who have many sexual partners;
• Low socioeconomic status of a couple;
• Poor nutrition. Women, who experience the deficiency of carotene, which is a form of vitamin A, have molar pregnancies more often than those women, who do not.
The reason of a molar pregnancy depends on which type occurs; however, it is generally considered that molar pregnancy is caused by some problem with the genetic information of either an egg or sperm. A molar pregnancy is possible to develop during the earliest terms of pregnancy, if:
• A sperm fertilized an abnormal, so to say “empty” egg, which bears no genetic information. In this case the chromosomes of the sperm duplicate and develop into a complete molar pregnancy. In a complete molar pregnancy there are no fetal components.
• Two sperm fertilize a normal egg. The cells begin to divide rapidly causing the development of an abnormal cluster of cells. In this case the cell mass, which occurs in the result of such fertilization, will most likely develop into a partial molar pregnancy. In case of a partial molar pregnancy these abnormal cells proliferate and destroy any component of a fetus that is in the uterus.
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