Women who have experienced complications during their pregnancies are at greater risk of developing a stroke later in life.
- Women who experience complications during pregnancy, such as gestational hypertension, preeclampsia or premature delivery, have a higher risk of having a stroke later.
- Women who have had two or more complicated pregnancies have an even greater increased risk of stroke.
- For researchers, it is necessary to take into account the history of pregnancies to calculate the risk of stroke for patients.
If pregnancy is mostly perceived as a happy event, it can be accompanied by several complications such as gestational hypertension, preeclampsia or prematurity. And it would seem that their repercussions on health do not end with childbirth.
Works published in the journal strokeeshow that they increase the risk of cerebrovascular accident (AVC) of the future mother.
Stroke: more risk in the event of pregnancy complications
To determine the link between pregnancy complications and strokes, researchers at the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center analyzed data from 144,306 women who gave birth in Finland after 1969. This represents 316,789 births. The results reveal that expectant mothers who experience complications during their pregnancy (gravid hypertension, preeclampsia or premature delivery) are more likely to develop a stroke during their lifetime and at a younger age.
In addition, women who have had two or more pregnancies with complications have a twice as high risk of having a stroke. Their stroke also occurred earlier: 52.6 years against 54.8 years for mothers who had a single difficult pregnancy and 58.3 years for those who had no complications.
“Specifically, women with recurrent complications during their pregnancies had more than twice the risk of having a stroke before the age of 45”says Dr. Natalie Bello, lead author of the study, in a communicated.
Stroke: pregnancy complications must be taken into account
These findings show the importance of monitoring and managing complications in pregnant women to protect their long-term health. “This underscores the need for women to share their pregnancy history with their physicians, particularly if they have neurological symptoms of stroke or transient ischemic attack (TIA) which tends to resolve within a few minutes to a few hours”adds the expert.
The scientist also calls for new research to examine the impact of adding pregnancy complications to stroke risk calculators. “This could help us better stratify risks in women and strategize how to apply prevention strategies such as cholesterol and blood pressure control.”says the expert.
