Preeclampsia a risk factor for future stroke
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Pregnant women who develop preeclampsia—a condition that includes abnormally high blood pressure—are known to run the risk of having a stroke during pregnancy, but researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now report that preeclampsia is also a risk factor for stroke in the future.
Dr. David W. Brown and colleagues in Atlanta used data from the Stroke Prevention in Young Women Study to assess the association of preclampsia with stroke in women between the ages of 15 and 44. The team identified 261 cases of stroke among nonpregnant women in the study group and compared them with 416 randomly chosen “controls” who had not had a stroke.
There was a history of preeclampsia in 15 percent of the women with stroke and in 10 percent of controls, the investigators report in the medical journal Stroke.
After taking account of age, race, education and number of pregnancies, women with a history of preeclampsia were 60 percent more likely to have a stroke than those without the pregnancy complication.
While the reason for the increased risk is unknown, the researchers say that the findings indicate that women with preeclampsia should be targeted “for close risk factor monitoring and control beyond the postpartum period” to reduce their risk of having a stroke later on.
SOURCE: Stroke, April 2006.
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