Medical Updates: Pregnancy is the process and succession of changes that occur in a woman’s organs and tissues as a result of the development of a fetus. From fertilization until delivery, the entire process takes an average of 266-270 days or nearly nine months.
During pregnancy, some women experience health problems. These complications might affect either the mother’s or the fetus’s health. Many women who were in good health before to becoming pregnant might have difficulties. These complications might turn the pregnancy into a high-risk pregnancy.
Certain pregnancy complications increase the chance of heart disease later in life. However, much more research is needed to understand how arteriosclerosis develops between pregnancy and heart disease later in life. A large new study led by Lund University researchers in Sweden finds that narrowing and calcification of the blood vessels of the heart are more likely among women who had previously encountered pregnancy complications.
Despite the fact that pregnancy complications are rapidly being recognized as a new type of risk factor for heart disease, it has yet to be defined how this information may best be used in healthcare.
“Our results suggest that the correlation exists even among women with a low expected risk of cardiovascular disease. The study is an important piece of the puzzle in understanding how women with pregnancy complications should be followed-up by their healthcare provider after pregnancy,” says Simon Timpka, an associate professor of clinical epidemiology at Lund University who also works as a resident in obstetrics and gynecology at Skne University Hospital. Also read:https://medicalupdates.in/worlds-first-saliva-based-pregnancy-test-kit-launched-in-israel-to-be-available-globally-in-2023/
The study included 10,528 women from the National Medical Birth Register* who had previously participated in the major population study SCAPIS (Swedish Cardiopulmonary bioImage Study) between the ages of 50 and 65. All of the women had CT scans of their coronary arteries (coronary computed tomography angiography) to detect blood vessel calcification, narrowing, and other signs of heart disease. The study looked for signs of heart disease based on the history of five common pregnancy complications: pre-eclampsia, high blood pressure during pregnancy (gestational hypertension), preterm delivery, gestational diabetes, and infants born small for gestational age.
When compared to the women who did not have pregnancy problems, 4% developed visible atherosclerosis of the coronary arteries (32 percent as opposed to 28 percent). Also read: https://medicalupdates.in/coffee-during-pregnancy-may-affect-a-childs-height-by-nearly-an-inch/
Pre-eclampsia and gestational hypertension had the strongest link. Two percent of women who had no difficulties in pregnancy had coronary artery narrowing, whereas five percent of women who had previously suffered from pre-eclampsia or pregnancy-induced hypertension had the same.
” To reduce the risk of these women developing coronary heart disease in the future, it is important that they check risk factors such as blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol regularly.”
Sofia Sederholm Lawesson, consultant cardiologist at the University Hospital in Linköping and one of the co-authors of the study
“In this study, we have investigated many different associations between complications in pregnancy and heart disease all at once, so it is possible that chance might explain individual results,” says Simon Timpka. “Yet the pattern is relatively consistent, which makes it easier to draw conclusions including that women with prior pre-eclampsia have changes in the coronary arteries that are equivalent to the changes seen in women who have not experienced complications in pregnancy but are five to ten years older.” Also read this:https://medicalupdates.in/parenting-tips-to-protect-and-promote-development-in-infants/
According to Simon Timpka, CT scans of the coronary arteries are increasingly being employed in patients that present with symptoms, but there is still a lack of large studies into the importance of some of the examined changes over time in women who do not exhibit current symptoms.
“Even if our study adds to our understanding of the development of coronary heart disease in middle-aged women who have previously experienced pregnancy complications, there is a need for long-term studies to understand the true meaning that our discoveries have for symptomatic disease,” Simon Timpka concludes.
