Women with high blood pressure in their first pregnancy have a greater risk of heart attack or cardiovascular death, according to a Rutgers study. The study is published in the Journal of Women's Health. Approximately 2 to 8 percent of pregnant women worldwide are diagnosed with preeclampsia, a complication characterized by high blood pressure that usually begins after 20 weeks of pregnancy in women whose blood pressure had been normal. Doctors haven't identified a single cause, but it is thought to be related to insufficiently formed placental blood vessels.
Preeclampsia is also the cause of 15 percent of premature births in the U.S. The researchers analyzed cardiovascular disease in 6,360 women, age 18 to 54, who were pregnant for the first time and diagnosed with preeclampsia in New Jersey hospitals from 1999 to 2013 and compared them to pregnant women without preeclampsia. They…
