MINNEAPOLIS, December 30, 2020 / PRNewswire / – Women who develop high blood pressure during pregnancy may be more likely to get lower scores on memory and thinking skills tests 15 years later than women who did not develop high blood pressure during pregnancy, which according to a new study published in the December 30, 2020, online journal of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
“Women with high blood pressure who start in pregnancy, as well as women with pre-eclampsia, after pregnancy should be closely monitored and they and their doctors should consider method changes. life and other therapies that may help reduce the risk of dementia and memory skills later in life, “said the study’s author Maria C. Adank, MD, de Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
The study included 596 pregnant women at the start of the study. A total of 481 women became pregnant with normal blood pressure and 115 women developed high blood pressure problems during pregnancy. Of those, 70% had gestational hip blood pressure, which is high blood pressure that starts after 20 weeks of pregnancy with women who were previously with normal blood pressure. The other 30% had pre-eclampsia, which was defined as high blood pressure combined with increased protein levels in the urine that develops after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
Fifteen years after pregnancy, the women tested their thinking and memory skills.
Women with high blood pressure in pregnancy were more likely to get lower scores on immediate recall testing and delayed recall. The test asks people to remember a list of 15 words, first immediately and then after waiting twenty minutes.
On the immediate recall test, which was administered three times, the women who had not had high blood pressure problems 15 years previously scored an average of 28 points out of a possible high score of 45, while the women with high blood pressure had been pregnant 15 years earlier they scored 25 points on average. Women with high blood pressure made pregnancy worse on the recall function immediately and after researchers switched for other factors that may affect thinking skills, such as overweight body index, level of education and ethnicity.
There was no difference between the two groups of women on tests of fine motor skills, verbal fluency, processing speed and spatial-visual ability.
“It is important to consider gestational hypertension and pre-eclampsia as risk factors for female-specific brain impairment,” Adank said. “Many women may think of this as a temporary issue during pregnancy and without understanding that it may have long-term effects. Future studies are needed to determine whether early treatment of high blood pressure can prevent mental problems in women with a history of high blood pressure in pregnancy. “
Adank noted that the study does not show a cause-and-effect relationship between high blood pressure and test scores. It only shows the society.
The limitation of the study is that no thinking and memory tests were taken before or during pregnancy, so researchers could not look at the effects of complex pregnancy with blood pressure. high on thinking skills within one woman.
The study was supported by Erasmus University Medical Center, Dutch Agency for Health Research and Development and Organization for Scientific Research, Ministry of Health, Welfare Sport, Ministry of Youth and Families, Council of Europe Research, Preeclampsia Foundation and Coolsingel Foundation (Stichting Coolsingel) .
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SOURCE Neurology
