Kinesiology researcher explores the relationship between sleep quality and cardiovascular health in pregnant women

From left, grad student Amy Moolyk and researcher Brittany Matenchuk

When Brittany Matenchuk was just starting her bachelor of science in kinesiology degree at the University of Alberta, she got some exciting news — her sister was having a baby. When asked for advice on how to exercise once the baby was born, Matenchuk was surprised to discover there wasn’t much in the way of guidelines for postpartum fitness. This conversation set her on a research path that has forked in different directions over the years, anchored all along by her passionate focus on the health of women and their babies.

Eight years later, Matenchuk is nearing the end of her PhD, working with pregnant women to learn how their level of physical activity impacts their quality of sleep and how that sleep quality affects their heart health. Matenchuk is a student under the supervision of Dr. Margie Davenport, lead researcher at the Program for Pregnancy & Postpartum Health, a research lab at the U of A that focuses on the impact of physical activity on health in pregnancy. 

We caught up with Matenchuk to find out what brought her to her current focus on sleep and cardiovascular health in pregnant women, and how women can get involved in her study.

Where did your research journey begin? 

I was extremely fortunate to be studying in a faculty at the U of A where one of the premier researchers in exercise and pregnancy in Canada, Dr. Margie Davenport, had recently started a faculty position. I had a gut feeling that I needed to be part of this research area, so like any self-assured undergraduate student, I sent her an email stating just that. That very passionate email set the trajectory of my research career since then. I started working in her lab as an undergraduate kinesiology practicum student in 2015, and I’ve studied women’s and children’s health ever since. 

What was some of the first research you contributed to?

One of the first projects I was lucky enough to contribute to was a study examining the interplay between sleep, physical activity and weight retention in the postpartum period. This is a complex question because the relationship between sleep and exercise is often cyclical. We found women who had poor sleep quality superimposed on excessive gestational weight gain had a much harder time losing their gestational weight postpartum. We also found that good sleep quality was much more common in postpartum women who were meeting the physical activity guidelines (150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per week), but there were also benefits of light physical activity. Helping to conduct this study gave me the opportunity to work with research participants first-hand, and take a study from data collection to completion, which was very rewarding.

What is your current project and what inspired it?

My current project is a prospective longitudinal study on the impact of sleep-disordered breathing on cardiovascular health in pregnancy. Sleep-disordered breathing is an umbrella term for symptoms ranging from snoring to full stops in breathing (sleep apnea) at night. Over time, sleep-disordered breathing has deleterious effects on the cardiovascular system and increases the risk of cardiovascular disease by 26 per cent. Sleep-disordered breathing is significantly understudied in women, despite research that has suggested women experience a greater impact on their cardiovascular health from sleep-disordered breathing than men. Numerous factors, including estrogen levels, rhinitis, reduced physical activity and weight gain, increase the risk of acquiring sleep-disordered breathing in pregnancy, but due to the time constraints of pregnancy, it is more difficult to identify and treat. Very little is known about the impact of sleep-disordered breathing in pregnancy on the cardiovascular system; however, a number of studies have linked this disorder to a threefold higher risk of pre-eclampsia, one of the leading causes of maternal and fetal mortality. We know that women who experience pre-eclampsia (an increase in blood pressure accompanied by signs of organ damage due to high blood pressure) have a two- to fourfold higher risk of heart disease later in life compared to women who had a normotensive pregnancy. 

When did you embark on this project?

I started my PhD in 2021 and we began recruitment for this study at the beginning of 2023. During this time, we received funding for this project through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Doctoral Research Award, as well as a graduate student award and an innovation grant from the Women and Children’s Health Research Institute (WCHRI).

What have been some of the biggest challenges and rewards so far in this study? 

Thinking about creating a research study is one thing, but getting a study from ethics approval all the way to data collection has many components and complexities! Working in a collaborative and supportive lab space has made all the difference. As for rewards, our participants are amazing; they’re tremendously gracious about volunteering their time to research so that we can try to improve the health of moms and their babies in the future. It will also be very exciting when we get to look at the final results of the study. 

Why is this area of research important? 

Approximately 25 per cent of pregnant women will experience sleep-disordered breathing during pregnancy, and this risk is magnified in individuals who enter pregnancy with a higher body mass index (BMI). Because there is a lack of data on the impact of this disorder on women’s health, guidelines for the screening and treatment of sleep-disordered breathing in pregnancy have not been devised. However, findings from non-pregnant populations suggest that sleep-disordered breathing is likely to have a negative impact on pregnant women’s cardiovascular health. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in women in Canada, so it’s important to identify modifiable risk factors such as sleep-disordered breathing. 

How many and what type of participants are you currently seeking for your study? 

We are recruiting 109 pregnant individuals for this study, both with and without sleep problems. 

What impact do you hope your study will have?

This study represents the first step in establishing a relationship between sleep-disordered breathing and cardiovascular health in pregnancy. Additionally, it will give us the opportunity to examine the relationship between physical activity and the risk of sleep-disordered breathing in pregnancy. 

Where would you like to see this work go in the future?

One day I would love for my research to help support the screening and treatment of sleep-disordered breathing in pregnancy. Most of the available screening tools are based on data from men, so obtaining data from women is an important step in ensuring they are screened using tools tailored to them. Sleep is now being recognized as a crucial factor for both physical and mental health, but research on sleep in pregnancy is lagging. One potential treatment for mild sleep-disordered breathing in pregnancy could be exercise, which is a low-cost modality with numerous additional health benefits, so experimental studies examining that question would be very exciting.