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Helsinki, Finland - Hypertension during pregnancy can lead to lifelong cognitive deficits in offspring, a new study suggests [1].
Researchers report that older men whose mothers had hypertension during pregnancy had more cognitive deficits than those with mothers who were normotensive. The deficits, first identified when the study participants were 20 years old, were uncovered again when they were almost 70 years old.
The study demonstrates that an adverse prenatal environment can have long-term consequences, said study author Dr Katri Räikkönen (University of Helsinki, Finland). "It shows that these effects are still present and evident several decades later—in other words, that these prenatal effects persist to old age," Räikkönen said in an interview.
The results are one more reason for women of childbearing age to avoid becoming obese, as this is a key risk factor for hypertensive spectrum disorder during pregnancy, she said.
However, although the results were statistically significant, mothers and their offspring should take heart that no individual-level conclusions can be drawn from the findings, she said. "The differences we saw were not clinically significant, if we think that a clinically significant difference would be one standard deviation; these differences were less than one-third of a standard deviation."
The new study is published online October 3, 2012 in Neurology.
Helsinki Birth Cohort
Hypertensive disorders, including chronic hypertension, gestational hypertension, and preeclampsia, complicate about 10% of all pregnancies, the authors note.
For this analysis, the researchers used a subsample of 398 men in the Helsinki Birth Cohort Study who were born between 1934 and 1944 and underwent cognitive testing twice—first during compulsory military service at an average age of 20.1 years and then again at an average age of 68.5 years. The cognitive battery included verbal, arithmetic, and visuospatial reasoning subtests, each consisting of 40 timed multiple-choice questions.
From medical records on maternal blood pressure and urinary protein tests during pregnancy, the researchers identified two groups of mothers: normotensive (those with systolic pressure <140 mm Hg or diastolic pressure <90 mm Hg during pregnancy) and hypertensive disorder in pregnancy (those with systolic blood pressure >140 mm Hg or diastolic blood pressure >90 mm Hg with or without proteinuria).
Compared with men born to normotensive mothers, those whose mothers had a hypertensive spectrum disorder scored lower on arithmetic tests (mean score 27.97 vs 29.30 at 20.1 years; 25.14 vs 28.20 at 68.5 years) after adjustments for several factors, including age at first cognitive test and the time interval between the two tests.
As for total cognitive ability, the older men in the hypertensive group scored 4.36 points lower and had a greater decline in total cognitive ability since the first test (2.88).
