Heart Disease Risk Up for First-Time Mothers With Preeclampsia

MONDAY, April 6, 2020 (HealthDay News) — First-time mothers with preeclampsia are at a higher risk for adverse cardiovascular outcomes, including myocardial infarction, stroke, and cardiovascular death, according to a study recently published in the Journal of Women’s Health.

Mary Downes Gastrich, Ph.D., from the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and Cardiovascular Institute of New Jersey in New Brunswick, and colleagues performed a retrospective matched case-control study that measured cardiovascular outcomes in 6,360 first-time mothers with preeclampsia and 325,347 control mothers without preeclampsia who gave birth between 1999 and 2013. Data were collected from the New Jersey Electronic Birth Certificate database and the Myocardial Infarction Data Acquisition System. The major outcome measures were myocardial infarction, stroke, cardiovascular death, and all-cause death.

The researchers found that first-time mothers with preeclampsia were more likely to have myocardial infarction, cardiovascular death, and all-cause death compared with matched controls. Mothers with PE were at higher risk for myocardial infarction (hazard ratio, 3.94), cardiovascular death (hazard ratio, 4.66), and all-cause death (hazard ratio, 2.32) compared with matched controls.

“The results support that a diagnosis of preeclampsia during a first pregnancy has a higher risk of a subsequent cardiovascular event or death compared to a non-preeclampsia population,” the authors write. “Because of the significantly increased cardiovascular outcomes of preeclamptic cases in this cohort, there may be indications that medical follow-up and intervention should be routinely recommended in these women after birth.”

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