Preeclampsia During Pregnancy May Cause Cardiac Risks After

Monday, July 2, 2018 (HealthDay News) – Women Who Have High Blood Pressure or Preeclampsia During Pregnancy May Be More Prone to Hypertension Type 2 Diabetes The emergence of these risk factors for heart disease soon after pregnancy can help explain why these women have an increased risk of heart attack and stroke later in life. Life

"Many researchers believe that pregnancy acts as a stress test [heart disease] and helps identify women prone to hypertension and other cardiovascular risk factors," says Dr. The study's author, Jennifer Stuart, is a postdoctoral researcher at Brigham and Women's Hospital and at Harvard TH. "Having this knowledge early in life gives you the opportunity to learn more about it. opportunity to p Reverting and Delaying Cardiovascular Disease It's never too late to improve your health behaviors, and many of the things that are recommended – such as healthy eating and physical activity – will probably benefit children and anyone else as well. living at home, "she said.

About 15 percent of women develop high blood pressure (gestational hypertension) or preeclampsia in at least one pregnancy, the researchers said. Preeclampsia is a complication of pregnancy that includes high blood pressure and additional problems, such as kidney or liver disorders or fluids in the lungs, according to the Preeclampsia Foundation.

The new study included nearly 60,000 women who had no heart disease or any known risk factor for heart disease early in the study. All women had given birth at least once between the ages of 18 and 45 years.

The health of these women was followed for an average of 25 to 32 years after their first pregnancy.

Just under 3% of women had high blood pressure during their first pregnancy and 6.3% had preeclampsia during their first pregnancy, according to the study's authors.

The risk of chronic high blood pressure was two to three times higher in women who had high blood pressure or preeclampsia during their pregnancy compared to women who did not have it. The risk of type 2 diabetes was 70 percent higher, while the risk of high cholesterol was 30 percent higher for these women, the study found.

The risk of developing chronic high blood pressure was higher in the five years following the birth of a woman, the researchers said.

"It is important that this information be shared with primary care providers," said Stuart. "They need to be aware that this risk can come up pretty quickly after pregnancy, and they have to be on the lookout for these risk factors and screen for them."

She added that more research needs to be done to see which prevention strategies will be most useful.

Dr. Peter Mercurio, New York cardiologist, was not surprised to find an increase in risk factors for heart disease in women who had high blood pressure during pregnancy or preeclampsia, but "the Surprising figures "

Mercurio said the guidelines already recommend asking women if they had high blood pressure during pregnancy. He agreed that more studies need to examine how often women who have had these problems need to be examined, and identify which prevention strategies might help them the most.

"This study has shown that if you have high blood pressure during pregnancy, I think we need to start treating women's health in a more holistic way and take a team approach to health, and the sooner the better, "he said.

The study was published on July 3 in Annals of Internal Medicine .

More information

Learn more about preeclampsia from the Preeclampsia Foundation.