Daily Dose: Social Vulnerabilities Linked to Cardiometabolic Risk in Pregnant Women

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 November 9, 2022, we reviewed a cross-sectional analysis of pregnant women in the US presented at the American Heart Association (AHA) Scientific Sessions 2022, held in Chicago and virtually, November 5-7, 2022.

The study

Researchers investigated the association between social vulnerability and prevalence of cardiometabolic (CM) risk factors in pregnant women. CM risk factors identified for the analysis included prepregnancy diabetes, prepregnancy hypertension, tobacco use, and obesity.

All 4 CM risk factors were associated with some social vulnerability, and some had stronger associations than others. Obesity, for example, had a 95% likelihood of being associated with socioeconomic vulnerability and was twice as likely to be associated with overall social vulnerability. However, while tobacco use was directly associated with socioeconomic status/housing composition and disability—with 95% likelihood—it was not associated with overall social vulnerability.

Clinical implications

"Social vulnerability and its domains are associated with prevalence of CM risk factors in pregnant women in the US. Further studies are needed to investigate the impact of targeting social determinants of health to improve CM risk and mortality in pregnant women," concluded authors.

Click here for the full study review.