12 hours ago
Another way mom's health in pregnancy could impact baby long-term
There's an increased risk that women with high blood pressure while they're pregnant will have children who have seizures, according to a new study led by researchers at University of Iowa Health Care.
The study, which included other researchers from Stanford University and in Taiwan, was published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
In a news release, the university said the findings suggest inflammation in the brain could play a role in the relationship between gestational hypertension and seizure risk, offering a potential target to prevent seizures in children whose mom had high blood pressure while they were in the womb.
Just over 1 in 6 pregnant women have gestational hypertension, which has been associated with various complications for both the mothers and the babies they carry. The researchers say this is the first large-scale study showing a link between high blood pressure and increased seizure risk in offspring.
Johns Hopkins University, which was not involved in the study, reports that seizures in children likely result from disturbances in electrical activity in the brain. They can range in severity from brief staring spells to active jerking motion to loss of consciousness.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention emphasizes that high blood pressure in pregnancy is treatable — and can often be prevented.
'We examined large national clinical databases as well as databases at the University of Iowa and Stanford University, and we even have international collaborations with database analysis from our collaborators in Taiwan,' Dr. Alex Bassuk, professor and head of pediatrics at the University of Iowa, who was the study's senior author, said in a written statement. 'This was a real team effort spanning several countries and institutions, and involved multiple departments at the University of Iowa, including pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology and psychology.'
The study used data from the Epic Cosmos dataset, with more than 246 million patient records taken from clinics and hospitals in the United States and Lebanon. Then they used animal models to provide added support to their findings.
The researchers found that children born to mothers who had high blood pressure while pregnant had significantly higher rates of seizures compared to those whose mothers had normal blood pressure. They also looked at the association using data from 'smaller, richly annotated cohorts' at the University of Iowa, Stanford and the addition of data from Taiwan to back up the findings.
In an effort to understand the link, the researchers developed two mouse models of gestational hypertension. Both confirmed that exposure to gestational high blood pressure in the womb increased both seizure sensitivity and death from seizures among offspring.
The mouse model, too, identified brain inflammation as significant in the disease process, highlighting sex-specific differences in which male offspring were more vulnerable to seizures.
Dr. Vinit Mahajan, a professor of ophthalmology at Stanford and a study co-author, said they were able to reduce the seizures in the mice by using anti-inflammatory drugs, 'based on what we learned from the model.'
The researchers hope that their findings will lead to further study and different approaches to treating gestational hypertension and reducing children's seizures.
'The connection between high blood pressure in pregnant moms and seizures in children from these pregnancies had been postulated before, but never examined on a large scale, and never modeled in an animal. With these new mouse models and this new connection between gestational hypertension and seizures, we can now perhaps come up with new childhood anti-seizure therapies,' says Baojian Xue, who has a doctorate and is a senior research scientist in pediatrics at the University of Iowa. He is first author on the study, which was funded in part by grants from the National Institutes of Health, The Tross Family Epilepsy Fund, and Research to Prevent Blindness.
The CDC said it's important to ask your health care provider about medications — both prescription and over-the-counter — that are safe to take while you're pregnant.
The public health giant also emphasizes the need for early and regular prenatal care. It says to go to every appointment.
Pregnant women should not start or stop a medication without checking with their health care provider, per CDC. Women who are pregnant should track their blood pressure at home and let their doctor know if it's higher than usual or if there are troubling symptoms. Often, a doctor or insurance company can help arrange for a home monitor.
Finally, the CDC says to eat a nutritious diet and maintain a healthy weight.
