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 To see how these pregnancy complications impacted health later in
life, researchers started following more than 22,000 women when they
were in their mid-50s, about 27 to 29 years after their first
pregnancies had occurred.
They found that women who had high blood pressure during pregnancy
were more than twice as likely to have it later as women who didn’t
experience this complication when they were younger. Women with this
problem during pregnancy were also more likely to develop
cardiovascular disease.
In addition, women who developed diabetes during pregnancy had a
four-times-higher risk of developing diabetes again later on.
And among women who developed diabetes or hypertension later in
life, those problems typically got recognized earlier if they had
previously experienced the conditions during pregnancy, researchers
found.
“If we understand that women with hypertensive disorders of
pregnancy are at increased risk of developing hypertension and
subsequent cardiovascular disease, and women with gestational
diabetes are at increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes
mellitus, these women could benefit from screening programs,” lead
study author Karst Heida of the University Medical Center Utrecht in
the Netherlands said by email.
Overall, almost 6,200 of the women in the study, or about 28
percent, had hypertension, or high blood pressure, while pregnant
and almost 1,100, or 5 percent, had gestational diabetes.
In the intervening years, there were more than 2,500 cardiovascular
events, including about 1,500 caused by heart disease and 720 due to
stroke.
Women with high blood pressure during pregnancy were diagnosed with
hypertension around age 44 on average, about eight years earlier
than women who developed hypertension without having had it during
pregnancy.
Women who had gestational diabetes were diagnosed with type 2
diabetes, a form of the disease linked to obesity and aging, around
age 53, about eight years earlier than women without a history of
diabetes during pregnancy.
The main limitation of the study is its reliance on the women to
accurately recall and report whether they had high blood pressure or
diabetes during pregnancies that occurred many years before the
start of the study, the authors acknowledge in the journal
Hypertension.
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In addition, high blood pressure is riskier when it develops earlier
in pregnancy, and researchers didn’t have data on the timing of this
complication. Women who have this pregnancy complication, however,
are less likely to enter the study at an older age because they have
a higher risk of future disease and poorer survival rates.
Even so, the findings should serve as a reminder to women to
consider any pregnancy complications when thinking about their risk
for future health problems, Kaberi Dasgupta, a researcher at McGill
University in Montreal who wasn’t involved in the study, said by
email.
Women can minimize their risk of these complications by starting
pregnancy at a normal body weight, and, if they get these conditions
while pregnant, by working with their doctor to improve their diet
and lifestyle, said Deirdre Tobias, a researcher at Brigham and
Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School who wasn’t involved in
the study.
“Knowing that women with these pregnancy conditions are at high risk
of certain health outcomes later in life can be valuable
information, like a window into their potential future health risk,”
Tobias said by email. “We should leverage this information to help
women monitor their health status after pregnancy, and motivate
change for a healthier lifestyle because diabetes, hypertension and
heart disease are among the most preventable diseases.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1Q8Sler Hypertension, published online October
12, 2015.
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