VIENNA — Both increasing severity and recurrence of gestational hypertension increase a woman's chances of developing ischemic heart disease later in life, Dr. Anna-Karin Wikström said at the 14th World Congress of the International Society for the Study of Hypertension in Pregnancy.
Long-term measures to prevent hypertension should be undertaken in women who experience severe or recurrent hypertension during pregnancy, said Dr. Wikström of Uppsala University, Stockholm.
Data from three Swedish medical databases were analyzed for more than 400,000 women with first births since 1973 and for more than 200,000 who gave birth to two infants between 1973 and 1982. Only singleton births were included. Women with chronic hypertension and/or diabetes were excluded.
After adjustment for maternal age, socioeconomic status, and hospital category, the relative risk of developing ischemic heart disease (IHD) after 19-28 years' follow-up was 1.6 for the women who had gestational hypertension without proteinuria in their first pregnancies, compared with those who did not have hypertension in their first pregnancies. Among women with preeclampsia the relative risk was 1.9, and among those with severe preeclampsia it was 2.8. All the between-group differences were statistically significant, she said.
In the group with two children, the women who had any degree of hypertensive disease during their first pregnancy but not during the second had a 1.9 relative risk of IHD, compared with those who did not have hypertension in either pregnancy. The relative risk of IHD for women with hypertension in the second pregnancy but not the first was 2.4, and for those with hypertension in both pregnancies, 2.8. The difference between the first-pregnancy and both-pregnancy groups was statistically significant, she noted.
“We don't think that [this] information must be given to all women with gestational hypertensive disease, since it could create a lot of anxiety in a large group of women who will never go on to develop ischemic heart disease,” Dr. Wikström said.
But she added that giving such information “could be considered in women with a history of severe or recurrent preeclampsia, or gestation with coexisting, avoidable independent risk factors such as smoking and obesity.”