Babies born to mothers who had abnormally high blood pressure during pregnancy are more likely to die from birth to adulthood.
- Increased risks of death have been observed for several causes: cardiovascular diseases, digestive disorders, endocrine, nutritional and metabolic pathologies.
- No significant association was observed between maternal blood pressure disorder and childhood cancer deaths.
When a pregnant woman suffers from an abnormal rise in blood pressure after 20 weeks of amenorrhea, it is called “gravid hypertension”. It is the most common health problem during pregnancy. This complication affects 5 to 10% of patients, depending on theHealth Insurance.
Several researches have shown that this blood pressure disorder is one of the leading causes of illness and death in mothers and their children. High blood pressure during pregnancy has also been associated with several pathologies in children later in life, such as metabolic syndrome (i.e. a combination of diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity), autoimmune diseases, neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders.
Hypertension: 2.4 million Danish patients were followed between 1978 and 2018
“There is a lack of evidence on the influence of maternal hypertension on the long-term mortality of offspring from birth through adolescence and beyond,” Chinese and Danish researchers said. This is why they decided to carry out a study published in the journal The British Medical Journal. For the purposes of the work, the scientists used Danish health records. The team followed 2,437,718 people born and living in Denmark from birth to death, between 1978 and 2018.
During their analysis, the authors took into account the sex of the child, the age of the mother at the time of delivery, her level of education, her income, her living conditions, her medical history and the smoking during pregnancy. “The role of time of onset and severity of pre-eclampsia has also been investigated,” they specified. As a reminder, pre-eclampsia is a pregnancy disease associating high blood pressure and the presence of protein in the urine.
The risk of death was higher in children exposed to maternal hypertension
According to the results, 102,095 mothers suffered from a blood pressure disorder during their pregnancy. In detail, 67,683 suffered from pre-eclampsia, 679 from eclampsia and 33,733 from hypertension. “During a 41-year follow-up, deaths occurred in 781 infants born to mothers with pre-eclampsia, 17 infants born to women affected by eclampsia, 223 infants born to mothers with hypertension,” can we read in the study.
According to the researchers, children exposed to a blood pressure disorder had a 26% higher risk of death from all causes than babies who were not exposed to it. They said further research is needed to examine the underlying physiological mechanisms between maternal blood pressure disorder and child mortality.
