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 “Having a child with a heart defect is a marker of your own risk for
heart disease,” study leader Dr. Nathalie Auger of the University of
Montreal Hospital Research Center in Quebec told Reuters Health in a
telephone interview.
Delivering a baby with a heart defect can be an early opportunity
for a woman to adopt healthier habits that could help protect her
own heart, such as quitting smoking, exercising and following a
healthy diet, Dr. Auger said.
Earlier research has found that mothers who deliver a child with any
type of birth defect are at increased risk of earlier death in the
long term, Dr. Auger and her team note in their April 2 report in
Circulation. Structural abnormalities of the heart are the most
common birth defect, occurring in 8 out of every 1,000 births,
according to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.
For the current study, researchers looked at nearly 1.1 million
women who delivered babies in Quebec in 1989-2013, including 1,516
infants with critical heart defects and 14,884 with non-critical
heart defects. Critical defects require treatment soon after birth,
while for non-critical defects, treatment can be delayed or may not
be necessary.
During follow-up, which lasted for up to 25 years after pregnancy,
mothers of infants with critical defects were 43 percent more likely
to be hospitalized for cardiovascular disease. Risk was 24 percent
higher for mothers whose babies had non-critical defects compared to
mothers of infants with no heart defects. Mothers of babies with
critical defects were more than twice as likely to have a heart
attack, three times more likely to have other disease due to
hardening of the arteries, and more than 40 times as likely to
require a heart transplant.
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For mothers of infants with non-critical defects, the risk of heart
failure, pulmonary blood vessel disease, and pacemaker insertion
were each roughly doubled.
While the study didn’t delve into why infants' heart defects and
maternal heart disease might be related, the authors note that they
share a number of risk factors, including maternal smoking. Mothers
of babies with heart defects, especially severe ones, can face
stress, anxiety and depression, which can in turn boost heart
disease risk, they add.
“It’s such a great opportunity, one that a man does not have,” Dr.
Auger said. “Pregnancy is really a great time to identify things
that are linked with your later health to allow you to make a change
now, rather than wait until later when it is perhaps too late.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2EgdAas Circulation, online April 2, 2018.
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