Predicting Women's Future Cardiovascular Health from Pregnancy Complications

The first reports on the association between pregnancy history and later life cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk in women appeared more than a decade ago. Preeclampsia, gestational hypertension, diabetes; and adverse pregnancy outcomes, such as preterm birth, having a small-for gestational age infant, a spontaneous abortion or a stillbirth have subsequently been linked to an increased maternal CVD-risk. Since 2011, the American Heart Association recommends taking a pregnancy history as part of cardiovascular risk assessment and recommends the referral of women with previous pregnancy complications for cardiovascular risk monitoring. It is, however, not yet firmly established if the pregnancy risk factors add to the cardiovascular risk assessment above and beyond traditional CVD-risk factors and if they act through other mechanistic pathways than those measured by classical cardiovascular risk factors.