The SHAPES research team at Newcastle University and Newcastle NHS Hospital Trust would like to give you an update about the SHAPES study. 

We started SHAPES back in April 2022: by 2024 a total of 1450 pregnant women and people had taken part in Stage One of the study.

• At the dating scan appointments, we took 6 ultrasound measurements and 22 body shape measurements.
• In total we took 406000 measurements during this stage of the study!

In a follow-up study, led by researcher Susan Lennie, we wanted to find out more about the experience of having the additional measurements taken as part of your dating scan appointment. 

Some participants from Stage One volunteered to take part and they were asked how it felt to have the body measurements taken, as well as the practicalities of having longer appointments. From these conversations we found that including the measurements in the dating scan appointment was acceptable but choice and consent, privacy, emotional safety and good communication was essential.  

You can read a summary of this follow-on study and the research has also been published in a scientific journal: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9032/13/20/2558 

The SHAPES team have now reviewed the routine maternity notes of everyone who took part in Stage One of the study. They have gathered together the relevant information about your pregnancy and how your baby was born to get a better idea of which women, people and babies will benefit from extra care during pregnancy. This information is currently being reviewed. 
 
The analysis so far shows that BMI is a poor measure to predict which pregnant women and people will go on to develop gestational diabetes and other pregnancy outcomes. The SHAPES team are investigating which combinations of measurements works best to predict who will develop gestational diabetes. They will repeat this process for the other pregnancy outcomes we are investigating, for example pregnancy hypertension.  

SHAPES-Bio

SHAPES-Bio is now underway: this is an extra SHAPES study which is using the routine blood samples taken during your pregnancy to see if simple blood tests can be added to the SHAPES measurements to identify which pregnant women, people and babies will benefit most from extra care in the future.

The blood samples have been analysed in the labs, and the results are currently being combined with the other SHAPES body measurements.   

Maternity Disparities Consortium

The SHAPES team have been awarded more research funds through the National Institute of Health and Care Research, which is part of the Department of Health.

They will be working with other doctors, midwives, and researchers from across the UK in a new Maternity Disparities Consortium, a UK-wide research programme which will focus on reducing the inequalities in maternity care. We will let you know more about this work as it develops.   

We’re really proud of the involvement of mums throughout the study, who have helped to guide and inform the project. Right from the development of the SHAPES research idea, groups of mums have shared their perspectives and experiences to help with the different steps of the project. We have now started talking to mums about what pregnancy, birth and baby information they find useful, where they gather it, what they trust and how they use it. This will be help us plan how we share our findings.  

We have also added a blog to our website where we will be adding insights from the research team as well as posts from mums about being part of the study and their experience of BMI and pregnancy.  

• If you are interested in helping us talk about SHAPES and how we share our findings, you can send a message to Janine, our patient and public involvement lead, who would love to hear from you. Janine would also love to chat with you about your experience of having the measurements taken as part of SHAPES. You can send a message to her at: hello@janine-smith.com  

Thanks again for being part of SHAPES, your involvement meant this research could happen, benefiting families in the future. 

You can also read more about the SHAPES projects on our website: https://research.ncl.ac.uk/shapes 

We will share more updates with you as the research progresses.  

1. SHAPES Cohort Study

• Ethics Approvals For Research
• Cohort Study Summary
• Research Documents
• Update For Participants
• Contact Details

2. SHAPES Individual Participant Data Study

3. Cost Effectiveness Study

 4. Qualitative Study 

5. Shapes Bio Study