Thursday, March 28, 2024

Borderline high blood pressure in late pregnancy could impact baby’s health

image:wikipedia.com
image:wikipedia.com

Women who develop prehypertension late in pregnancy may be more likely to give birth to underweight or stillborn babies than women whose blood pressure remains normal, according to new research in the American Heart Association’s journal Hypertension.

Prehypertension is a systolic pressure (the top number) between 120-129 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg) or a diastolic pressure (the bottom number) between 80-89 mm Hg, or both. Hypertension (blood pressure of 140/90 mm Hg or above) has previously been associated with low birth weight and stillbirth. However, this may be the largest study to examine blood pressure changes to pre-hypertensive levels in women whose blood pressure was normal at the beginning of their pregnancy, researchers said.

“Working as a clinical doctor in obstetrics, I often meet women with ‘borderline high blood pressure,’ and I wanted to find out if they had increased risks of adverse fetal outcomes,” said Anna-Karin Wikström, M.D., Ph.D., study lead author and associate professor of obstetrics at Uppsala University in Sweden.

Compared to women whose blood pressure remained normal, researchers found:

  • Women who had prehypertension in late pregnancy (36 weeks) were 69 percent more likely to give birth to a baby that was underweight and 70 percent more likely to have a stillbirth.
  • Those who experienced a 15 point or greater increase in diastolic blood pressure and developed prehypertension were more than twice as likely to deliver a small baby.
  • Among all women studied (with or without prehypertension), the likelihood of having a small baby increased by 2 percent for each single point rise in diastolic blood pressure.

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