New Delhi: Women who experienced a complication in pregnancy could be at a higher risk of developing cardiometabolic-renal conditions in subsequent years, according to UK research.
Complications of gestational diabetes, high blood pressure, and postnatal depression were linked to a raised risk of four conditions — cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure or chronic kidney disease, findings published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) Medicine suggest.
Researchers, including those from King’s College London, also found that pre-term birth, miscarriage, stillbirth, placental abruption — where the placenta separates from the inner wall of the womb before delivery — and babies born either small or large for their gestational age, were associated with a raised risk of at least one cardiometabolic-renal condition.
“Gestational hypertension and pre-eclampsia more than tripled the rate of hypertension and approximately doubled the rate of chronic kidney disease, with smaller increases for cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes mellitus,” they wrote.
They added, “Gestational diabetes mellitus was associated with a sevenfold higher rate of type 2 diabetes mellitus and increased rates for hypertension and cardiovascular disease.”
“Postnatal depression increased the rate of all four outcomes by 35-56% for the latest pregnancy,” the authors wrote.
They searched a primary care database to find women who had been pregnant and were registered with a GP (general practitioner) in the UK during 2000-2022. The information was linked to hospital data to identify pregnancy complications.
The team identified more than 1.4 million women who had been pregnant, with or without pregnancy complications, and were followed for an average of four years.
The authors said more research is needed to better understand the underlying mechanism behind these associations and to see whether adding a woman’s pregnancy history to existing risk models makes it easier to predict her future heart, kidney and metabolic health.
They added that while the study does not imply that the pregnancy complication causes a subsequent disease, the complication functions as a clinical marker of underlying risk.
“These findings support obtaining a full reproductive history and using the postpartum period as an opportune time for risk assessment and preventative cardioprotective strategies in women with a history of adverse pregnancy outcomes,” the team wrote.
