Preeclampsia and Parity: Is Having More Than One Child Good for Your Heart?

Later in life, women with hypertensive disorders of pregnancy have excess risk for death from cardiovascular disease. Primiparous women are also at heightened risk. Norwegian investigators used national birth and death registries to determine whether risk for cardiovascular death is greater for women with a history of preeclampsia and just one child, compared with risk associated with either factor alone.

Of 836,147 women with first singleton births who were followed between 1967 and 2002, 4% had diagnosed preeclampsia and 16% had only one child. Overall, 0.5% of women died of cardiovascular disease during follow-up. Women who had preeclampsia in their first pregnancies had greater likelihood of death from cardiovascular disease than those w…