High
blood pressure in pregnancy tied to family risk
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[August 28, 2015]
By Andrew M. Seaman
(Reuters Health) - For women with
pregnancy-related high blood pressure, the higher risk of hypertension
that follows them through life may be due not just to the episode in
pregnancy but also to family risk factors, researchers say.
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Their study looked at 252 women who had high blood pressure during
pregnancy, as well as their sisters and brothers who'd never had
high blood pressure.
"We wanted to really be able to isolate a women’s pregnancy from her
family history," said lead author Tracey Weissgerber, who is also
from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
Overall, the researchers had data on more than 1,400 female and more
than 900 male siblings, according to a report in the Journal of the
American Society of Nephrology.
About 72 percent of women who had high blood pressure during
pregnancy ended up developing it again before age 60, compared to
about 62 percent of women who had never been hypertensive.
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After accounting for various other risk factors, the researchers
found that compared to their sisters who'd never had high blood
pressure, women with hypertension while pregnant were about 75
percent more likely to develop it again at some point.
But still, for brothers and sisters with no history of hypertension,
having a sister who'd been hypertensive while pregnant meant a
higher risk later in life for those siblings. The brothers also had
an increased risk of cardiovascular events.
These findings, the authors say, "suggest familial factors
contribute to the increased risk of future hypertension in women who
had hypertension in pregnancy."
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More research is needed to determine exactly why those women are at
a higher risk, said Weissgerber and her colleague, senior author Dr.
Vesna Garovic, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
"We know that cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of morbidity
and mortality in women, but we don’t know a lot about sex-specific
factors," Garovic said.
"Hypertension in pregnancy is an opportunity to identify these women
early," Weissgerber said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1MRkJP8 Journal of the American Society of
Nephrology, online August 27, 2015.
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