Risk of developing heart attack increases by 45% in women who had high blood pressure during pregnancy
Women who have high blood pressure during pregnancy, or a related more severe condition called pre-eclampsia, are at much higher risk of heart attacks and strokes.
According to new research presented today at the British Cardiovascular Society Conference in Manchester, the risk was estimated in comparison to women who did not face these issues during pregnancy.
The study included nearly all (97%) woman who gave birth in England over an 18 year period with just over 276,000 (4%) pregnancies affected by high blood pressure and 223,715 (3%) with pre-eclampsia. The researchers looked for the risks of more than 15 different kinds of heart and circulatory diseases, from heart attack and stroke to heart failure and cardiomyopathy.
A history of pre-eclampsia during pregnancy led to a three-fold increased risk in heart attacks and over double the risk of cardiomyopathy
The team found that the risk of developing a serious heart and circulatory condition increased by 45% if a woman had high blood pressure during pregnancy, or by nearly 70% for women who had experienced pre-eclampsia, compared to those who had normal blood pressure during pregnancy.
A history of high blood pressure during pregnancy raised the risk of having the most common form of stroke (ischaemic stroke) by 80% and doubled the risk of potentially fatal cardiomyopathies, a family of conditions where the heart muscle is diseased and becomes ineffective at pumping blood.
A history of pre-eclampsia during pregnancy led to a three-fold increased risk in heart attacks and over double the risk of cardiomyopathy, when compared to women with normal blood pressure during pregnancy.
The more affected pregnancies that a woman had, the more her risk of serious heart and circulatory complications increased. For example, women with two or more pregnancies where they had high blood pressure were more than twice as likely to have a stroke than those with normal blood pressure. Those with two or more pregnancies with pre-eclampsia were nearly 4 times as likely to have ischaemic stroke and 3 times more likely to have a heart attack, compared to women with pregnancies with normal blood pressure.
Pregnancy-related high blood pressure, or gestational hypertension, is high blood pressure that first starts when a woman is pregnant and usually goes away after they have had their baby. It can be mild (90-99/140-149), moderate (100-109/150-159) or severe (above 110/160).
Professor Metin Avkiran, Associate Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation, said: “This study doesn’t show that having high blood pressure or developing pre-eclampsia while you are pregnant means you’re guaranteed to go on to have a heart attack or stroke, but it does raise some important red flags.”
“Developing high blood pressure when you’re pregnant could be an early warning of an underlying problem that might lead to other heart and circulatory diseases at a later date,” commented cardiologist Dr Dawn Adamson.
