Hypertension in Pregnancy Escalates Risk of Kidney Disease

The sudden onset of high blood pressure in pregnancy can affect a mother's health, particularly her organs. Shedding light on this issue, according to a new study, pregnant women who experience hypertension during pregnancy are at a higher risk of kidney disease than others, CBCnews reported.

Countless studies have shown that gestational hypertension leads to severe birth outcomes, like low birth weight and premature birth. In some cases, the gestational hypertension develops into pre-eclampsia. Pre-eclampsia is a condition that triggers hypertension and will have a negative impact on both the pregnant woman and her baby.  Between 5 and 8 percent of pregnancies in the United States are affected by this condition. Women suffering from pre-eclampsia will have high blood pressure, fluid retention and protein in the urine, leading to an adverse impact on the growth of the unborn baby in the uterus. The exact cause of this condition is not yet fully known.

To analyze the risk factors associated with hypertension in pregnancy, a team of researchers led by Dr. I-Kuan Wang of China Medical University in Taiwan looked at more than 26,000 pregnant women with hypertensive disorders and 213,397 women without the disorder.  The participants were aged between 19 and 40 years and did not have any previous history of kidney disease.

Researchers followed the participants for more than six years. At the end of the study, they found that women with high blood pressure in pregnancy have a 12.4 times increased risk of end-stage kidney disease.

"We found that women with hypertensive disorders during pregnancy were at higher risk of end-stage renal disease than women without complicated pregnancies," Dr. Wang told CBCnews.

Concerned with the findings, health experts recommend health practitioners to give proper care to women with gestational hypertension after birth.

"This study by Wang and colleagues is timely because it shows the importance of hypertension during pregnancy as a marker for future chronic kidney disease, cardiovascular disease and diabetes," daily RX.com quoted Dr. Julian Spaan of Maastrict University and Prof. Dr. Mark Brown from the University of New South Wales in Australia, as writing in a commentary that appeared along with the study.

"It also highlights one of the current pitfalls of clinical practice: although these women have great attention paid to their high blood pressure during pregnancy, there is no structured follow-up of blood pressure or cardiovascular and renal risk factors after pregnancy. Better surveillance after pregnancy should help prevent not only chronic kidney disease but also cardiovascular disease."

The findings of the study were published Monday, Jan. 21, in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).