Journal
JOURNAL OF WOMENS HEALTH
Volume 31, Issue 6, Pages 808-818Publisher
MARY ANN LIEBERT, INC
DOI: 10.1089/jwh.2021.0449
Keywords
maternal health; pregnancy; gestational weight gain; cardiovascular diseases; C-reactive protein; obesity
Categories
Funding
- National Institutes of Health (NIH), DHHS, through the National Institute on Aging (NIA)
- National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR)
- NIH Office of Research onWomen's Health (ORWH) [U01NR004061, U01AG012505, U01AG012535, U01AG 012531, U01AG012539, U01AG012546, U01AG012553, U01AG012554, U01AG012495]
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The study investigated the association between excessive gestational weight gain (GWG) and cardiovascular health risk among midlife parous women. Results showed that women with a history of excessive GWG had a small but statistically significant difference in ASCVD risk and a moderate, statistically significant difference in CRP. Further research is needed to understand the mechanistic pathway between excessive GWG and long-term maternal cardiovascular health.
Background: Excessive gestational weight gain (GWG) is consistently linked with maternal risk of obesity. However, the literature on its long-term cardiovascular risk is minimal and conflicting. We evaluated whether excessive GWG is associated with a high-risk cardiovascular profile among parous women in midlife.Materials and Methods: Participants were women in the multiethnic cohort Study of Women's Health Across the Nation with a history of live birth(s). Excessive GWG was defined according to Institute of Medicine guidelines and collected by self-recall. Outcomes were the atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) risk score and C-reactive protein (CRP), measured at the study baseline when mean age was 47 years, and at 10 follow-up visits (1996-2017). We estimated the association of excessive GWG with outcomes through linear mixed model regression.Results: The analytic sample included 1318 women with 3049 singleton births. Over 40% (536) reported one or more pregnancies with excessive GWG. Longitudinal models estimated that at a mean age of 67, women with a history of excessive GWG had a 9.8% (9.2, 10.5) 10-year ASCVD risk, compared to 9.5% (8.9, 10.1) for those without, and mean CRP of 2.20 mg/L (1.89, 2.57) versus 1.85 mg/L (1.61, 2.14), respectively, adjusted for participant characteristics.Conclusions: In this multiethnic cohort of parous women, a history of excessive GWG was associated with a small, but statistically significant difference in ASCVD risk, and a moderate, statistically significant difference in CRP across midlife. More research is necessary to understand the mechanistic pathway between excessive GWG and long-term maternal cardiovascular health.
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