Highlights:
- Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP) can put women to a higher risk of heart disease later
- Women with HDP have a 63% higher chance of getting a heart disease than women who have normal blood pressure during pregnancy
Link between Hypertensive Pregnancy and Heart Disease
To investigate the relationship between a hypertensive pregnancy and the onset of CVD, researchers at the Brigham followed 60,739 mothers for incident CVD after their first birth using data from the Nurses’ Health Study II.women with HDP had a 63 percent higher rate of CVD events
compared to women who had normal blood pressure during pregnancy.The increased risk of CVD was not explained by shared risk factors, including pre-pregnancy body mass index, smoking, and parental history of CVD.
The researchers also found that the majority of the increased risk (64 percent) was jointly accounted for by the subsequent development of chronic hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, type 2 diabetes, and/or weight gain after the first birth.
These established CVD risk factors accounted for an even higher proportion of the CVD risk among women with gestational hypertension (84 percent) than among those with preeclampsia (57 percent).
Researchers also found that the
overall relationship between HDP and CVD appeared to be driven by underlying relationships between preeclampsia and coronary heart disease, and between gestational hypertension and stroke.
“We are eager to continue investigating strategies to reduce long-term cardiovascular risk following hypertensive pregnancy and to empower and equip these patients to improve their cardiovascular health in the years and decades after delivery.”
Source-Eurekalert