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Mayo research shows high blood pressure in pregnancy can have lasting effects. Here's what you should know

Using Rochester Epidemiology Project data, Mayo Clinic researchers found that hypertension during pregnancy can increase the risk of certain health conditions later in life for both mother and child.

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Dr. Vesna Garovic, chair of Mayo Clinic's Division of Nephrology & Hypertension and the director of the Center for Clinical and Translational Science.
Contributed / Mayo Clinic

ROCHESTER — High blood pressure impacts roughly 1 out of every 13 pregnancies, making conditions such as chronic hypertension and pre-eclampsia relatively common complications.

While these conditions have short-term impacts on a pregnant person's body, a used locally sourced data to show how high blood pressure in pregnancy can contribute to health issues years later for mothers and their biological children.

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"Our question for offspring was: Is this really a family history of hypertension — that mother developed later in life — that is putting them at risk for hypertension?" said chair of Mayo Clinic's Division of Nephrology & Hypertension and the senior author of the study. "Or is it the fact that they were actually products of pregnancies that were complicated by hypertension?"

Garovic and her co-authors used data from the to review the health records of nearly 9,000 people born to about 7,500 area women from 1976 and 1982. Now that the babies born in this cohort are in their 40s, the researchers could see if people born from hypertensive pregnancies had a greater chance of developing hypertension in adulthood.

Here are the main takeaways from this new research, which was published on July 25 in the journal Hypertension.

1. Several types of high blood pressure were included in the study.

Previous studies, Garovic said, have looked at the impacts of pregnancy-related blood pressure conditions, also known as hypertensive disorders of pregnancy. These conditions, which include gestational hypertension and pre-eclampsia, cause high blood pressure during pregnancy. Past research has looked at this link between pregnancy-related hypertension and the risk of developing chronic high blood pressure later in life for mother and child, Garovic said.

"A woman who has hypertension in pregnancy, including pre-eclampsia, is at risk for hypertension later in life," Garovic said.

In this study, the researchers included hypertensive disorders of pregnancy as well as maternal chronic hypertension, defined as "a diagnosis of chronic hypertension in the offspring's mother before, during or after pregnancy." Put simply, this refers to high blood pressure in the mother that is unrelated to a previous or future pregnancy.

The data, Garovic said, point to children having an increased risk of high blood pressure even if their mothers developed high blood pressure after that pregnancy.

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"We actually found out that it is both hypertension in pregnancy and maternal hypertension later in life, that they're putting offspring at risk of hypertension," Garovic said.

The Rochester Epidemiology Project has changed the way we view ADHD. Led directly to new dementia diagnoses. Created a roadmap for treating epilepsy. Right now, dozens of researchers from around the world are relying on The REP for treating COVID-19 patients and tracking vaccine efficacy. The REP has, in the words of the New England Journal of Medicine, “revolutionized medical research.” And, if you’ve ever lived in Rochester, you’re probably a part of it.

2. Family history and preventive care are important.

Having high blood pressure while pregnant increases one's future risk of hypertension, and being exposed to high blood pressure while in utero can increase one's future risk of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, childhood asthma and altered cardiac structure.

It is important for patients and their health care providers to know this information, Garovic said, and to pay attention to lifestyle factors for managing their blood pressure, such as diet and exercise.

"Pediatricians should elicit this important history from the mothers of the patients," Garovic said. "People born from hypertensive pregnancies should bring that to their physician and may need more health monitoring and screening and should be provided timely medical advice about diet, exercise and other lifestyle measures to reduce the risks."

3. High blood pressure in pregnancy is becoming more common.

Garovic said pre-existing high blood pressure before pregnancy is relatively rare because people who are in their 20s and 30s are less likely to have that condition. But because more women are waiting longer to have children, more patients are entering pregnancy with hypertension.

"Women in their 30s, even 40s, when they get pregnant, they maybe are more chronically hypertensive," Garovic said. "There are also these sophisticated measures for treatment of infertility that, on their own, can be associated with greater risk of hypertension in pregnancy, such as in vitro fertilization."

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Dr. Vesna Garovic has spent her Mayo Clinic career studying pre-eclampsia, a serious pregnancy disorder. Her work suggests that pre-eclampsia's impact on a mother's health extends beyond childbirth.

4. There's still more to learn.

Garovic and her co-authors' study builds into a growing field of research on how exposures to different conditions in the womb have long-term effects on the children born from those pregnancies.

"There is a huge interest in what we call fetal origins of adult disease," Garovic said. "This study is aligned (with) that sort of way of thinking that, indeed, in your health, an issue that you may have later in life may be defined as early as while being in utero."

Scientific knowledge of fetal origins of adult disease underlines some of the health advice given to those who are pregnant, Garovic said: avoiding alcohol, eating healthy and avoiding certain medications that are known to have negative impacts on a pregnancy.

"It means that young mothers and pregnant women should follow a healthy lifestyle, keep their weight down, eat healthy and exercise in order to improve the health of the child later in life," Garovic said.

Dené K. Dryden is the Post Bulletin's health reporter. Readers can reach Dené at 507-281-7488 and ddryden@postbulletin.com.
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