Sustaining cardiovascular health after complicated pregnancy could lower future CVD risk
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Key takeaways:
- Maintaining heart health after a complicated pregnancy could lower future CVD risk.
- Risk in women with high adherence to the AHA’s Life’s Essential 8 was similar regardless of adverse pregnancy history.
Women with a history of adverse pregnancy outcomes may be able to achieve similar heart health as women with no such history if they adhere to the American Heart Association’s Life’s Essential 8, a speaker reported.
Women with prior adverse pregnancy outcomes and lower Life’s Essential 8 scores experienced CV risk in excess of those without a history of pregnancy complications with similar scores, according to research presented at the AHA’s Epidemiology, Prevention, Lifestyle & Cardiometabolic Scientific Sessions.
“Previous studies have shown that women with a history of adverse pregnancy outcomes tend to have a higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease later in life,” Frank Qian, MD, MPH, cardiovascular medicine fellow at Boston Medical Center and clinical instructor at the Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, said in a press release. “However, it is unknown how much of this increased cardiovascular disease risk can be potentially modified by healthy lifestyle behaviors.”
For the present study, Qian and colleagues evaluated the potential link between maintained CV health and incident CVD in a cohort of 2,263 women with prior adverse pregnancy outcomes compared with 107,260 parous participants without prior adverse pregnancies.
Adverse pregnancy outcomes included hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, gestational diabetes, placental abruption, small for gestational age or preterm birth. The cohort was more than 94% white.
CV health was measured on a scale of 0 to 100 using the AHA’s Life’s Essential 8 parameters: diet, physical activity, tobacco use, sleep, weight, cholesterol, serum glucose and BP.
During a median follow-up of 13.5 years, in the overall cohort, women with a score of more than 76 had significantly lower incidence of total CVD (HR = 0.43; 95% CI, 0.29-0.65), CHD (HR = 0.31; 95% CI, 0.17-0.56) and atrial fibrillation (HR = 0.46; 95% CI, 0.23-0.91) compared with women with a score of less than 67.
Women with a history of adverse pregnancy outcomes who had high Life’s Essential 8 score had similar risk compared with those without a history of adverse pregnancy outcomes with similar scores (HR = 0.95; 95% CI, 0.63-1.43). However, Qian and colleagues observed excess risk in women with a history of adverse pregnancy outcomes with intermediate scores (HR with history = 1.73; HR without history = 1.25) and low scores (HR with history = 2.48; HR without history 1.81).
“We were most surprised to find that women who had a history of pregnancy complications and were able to achieve and maintain a high level of cardiovascular health after pregnancy significantly reduced their risk of future cardiovascular disease. They essentially had an equivalent CVD risk to women without no history of adverse pregnancy outcomes who also had high cardiovascular health,” Qian said in the release.
“Our study did not include enough women from other diverse races or ethnicities to have to be able to understand how cardiovascular health metrics after an adverse pregnancy outcome may influence long-term CVD risk,” Qian said in the release. “That being said, we observed a trend towards lower risk for cardiovascular disease in women who maintained better cardiovascular health after pregnancy, so these improvements in cardiovascular health should also be beneficial to women of other races and ethnicities, though more research is needed to confirm this hypothesis.”
Reference:
- Improving & maintaining heart health after pregnancy may reduce the risk of future CVD. https://newsroom.heart.org/news/improving-maintaining-heart-health-after-pregnancy-may-reduce-the-risk-of-future-cvd. Published March 21, 2024. Accessed March 21, 2024.
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Qian F, et al. Abstract 65. Presented at: Epidemiology, Prevention, Lifestyle & Cardiometabolic Scientific Sessions; March 18-21, 2024; Chicago.
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