Unable to find a mentor interested in excessive vomiting, Dr. Vegzo took a job studying ovarian cancer at university, a position he remained, mostly part time, for the next 20 years. But he started collecting research on excessive vomiting on nights, weekends, and Fridays when he wasn’t working in the lab. Her younger brother, Rick Schoenberg, 51, a statistician at UCLA, helped her create an online survey of hyperemesis gravidarum patients, and Hyperemesis Education and Research Foundation (HER). He offered collaborators and small grants to fund his work. In 2005,Dr. Vejzo also began partnering with obstetricians and gynecologists at USC.
said d. “The answers just kept coming because people were like, ‘Yeah, my sister has it; my mom has it.’” In 2011, Dr. Viso and its collaborators Publish their findings in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. They found that women who had a sister with hyperemesis gravidarum had a 17-fold increased risk of developing the condition compared with those who did not, providing some of the first clear evidence that the condition can be inherited from parents.
Dr Vigzo knew that DNA analysis would be crucial to understanding the genetics of excessive vomiting. So in 2007, I started collecting saliva samples from people who had the condition and who didn’t. Every Friday for 10 years, he called study participants—more than 1,500 in all—to ask for their medical records and consent to participate, and he sent them saliva collection kits from his home.
But Dr. Vegzo wasn’t sure how he would pay for the genetic test. Grant proposals to the National Institutes of Health were rejected. Since 2007, the agency has funded just six studies on excessive vomiting in total $2.1 million.
The number is small compared to the economic burden of the condition, said Kimber McGibbon, executive director of the HER Foundation. (Amy Schumer, who has publicly documented her struggle with excessive vomiting, is on the foundation’s board of directors.) Excessive hospitalization is believed to cost patients and insurance about $3 billion annually, she says. Then there’s the cost of drugs, home health care, job loss, and complications like postpartum depression. “That’s just ridiculous,” he said.
‘there he is’
Without the funds to analyze the saliva samples that had accumulated in the lab’s freezer, Dr. Viso came up with an alternative strategy when his older brother gave him a 23andMe DNA test kit for his 42nd birthday. After her group registered, she received a standard email giving her the option to participate in the company’s research study by completing an online survey and consenting to the use of her genetic data. “I saw what they did, which I thought was cool,” he said.
I asked 23andMe if they would include a few questions about nausea and vomiting during pregnancy in their customer survey, and they agreed. A few years later, he worked with the company to scan the genetic data of tens of thousands of 23andMe customers who agreed, looking for DNA variations linked to the severity of nausea and vomiting during pregnancy. The result Published in Nature Communications in 2018.
