Daily Dose: Preeclampsia and Risk of Premature Ischaemic Cardiovascular Disease

Patient Care brings primary care clinicians a lot of medical news every day—it’s easy to miss an important study. The Daily Dose provides a concise summary of one of the website's leading stories you may not have seen.

On February 1, 2023, we reported on a study published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology that investigated the timing and trajectory of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and ischaemic stroke risk in women with and without a history of preeclampsia.

The study

Researchers conducted a register-based study that included 1 157 666 Danish women with a live birth or stillbirth between 1978 and 2017. The research team estimated 20-year cumulative incidences of AMI and ischaemic stroke and evaluated the influence of preeclampsia severity and recurrence on rates of AMI and ischaemic stroke by time since pregnancy. The median length of follow-up for this cohort was 20.5 years.

Results showed that in the first decade post-partum, rates of AMI were up to 4 times higher and of ischemic stroke up to 3 times higher for women who experienced preeclampsia vs women who did not. Risk for both ischemic cardiovascular events persisted at 20 years, with 1.5- to 2-fold higher rates of AMI and ischemic stroke observed in women with vs those without a history of preeclampsia. The relative risks were highest among younger women, aged 30 to 39 years, within a decade of preeclampsia but remained substantial more than 20 years later.

Note from authors

"Our findings suggest that a history of pre-eclampsia should focus attention on a group of women at potentially high risk of CVD, with the aim of improving risk assessment and disease prevention in this vulnerable group."

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