Researchers at the University of Bergen investigated the relationship between pregnancy history and subsequent cardiovascular mortality risk in 40-year-old women.

It has been proven that women with pregnancy complications have approximately twice the risk of subsequent cardiovascular disease. However, most previous studies focused on individual complications rather than the complete pregnancy history.

“Pregnancy history is a unique feature of women’s health, it’s free, easily available, and it’s associated with the most frequent cause of death women face,” says Liv Grimes, University of Wisconsin School of Global Public Health and Primary Care. Associate Professor Tvet Kvarvik said.bergen, norway

In collaboration with researchers at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and colleagues at the University of Bergen, she studied the relationship between total pregnancy history and relative risk of death from atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) in 40-year-old women. We investigated the relationship. .

This paper was published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

The risk of dying from cardiovascular disease is five times higher.

The study combined several Norwegian registries covering the period 1967 to 2020 and identified more than 800,000 women alive to age 40.

The primary outcome was time to ASVC death by age 69 years.

Exposures include the number of pregnancies a woman has recorded (0-4), preterm birth before 35 weeks of gestation, pre-eclampsia (high blood pressure and protein in the urine), and placental abruption (when the placenta separates). ) and other complications. separation from the uterus), perinatal death, or full-term or near-term birth weight less than 2700 grams.

They found that a history of pregnancy at age 40 was strongly associated with ASCVD mortality.

“For women who reached age 40, the risk of death from ASCVD by age 69 increased in a strong dose-response manner with the number of complicated pregnancies,” Kvalvik says.

Within each level of the total number of pregnancies a woman had by age 40, the risk of death increased as the number of complicated pregnancies increased. A woman who has had multiple complicated pregnancies before the age of 40 may have her risk increased by 3-5 times and even more. In comparison, women with three uncomplicated pregnancies had the lowest ASCVD mortality risk.

Intervention from an early age may benefit.

“There is growing scientific evidence supporting an association between adverse pregnancy outcomes and subsequent CVD, even though women with comorbidities may not be aware of their increased CVD risk,” Kvalvik said. He said and added:

“Our findings identify relatively young women who may benefit from interventions to reduce cardiovascular disease mortality and morbidity, before other clinical indicators of CVD risk are fully apparent. We support the possibility of using a complete pregnancy history for this purpose.”