Women who are depressed and feel
anxious during early pregnancy may have a higher risk of developing high blood
pressure during pregnancy, a potentially dangerous condition, researchers
report.
About 5% of women develop high blood pressure 20 weeks or more into
pregnancy, a condition called preeclampsia. If not kept under control, often
with bed rest, preeclampsia can cause serious complications for women and their
babies, and in rare cases can be fatal. The causes of preeclampsia are unknown.
To see whether a woman's mental state during pregnancy affects the risk of
preeclampsia, Dr. Tapio Kurki, of the University Central Hospital of Helsinki,
Finland, and colleagues followed 623 healthy white women who were pregnant for
the first time. During the first 10 to 17 weeks of pregnancy, the women were
screened for depression and anxiety, and then their blood pressure was monitored
for the rest of pregnancy.
Overall, 30% of the women were depressed and 15% had anxiety, according to
the report in the April issue of the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Preeclampsia developed in 4.5% of the women.
After factors that could have affected the results were taken into account
-- such as smoking, alcohol use, socioeconomic status and age -- women who were
depressed were 2.5 times more likely to develop preeclampsia than nondepressed
women. The risk was more than three times greater in women who had anxiety. In
addition, the risk of preeclampsia was more than five times higher in women with
depression and an infection called bacterial vaginosis than in women who did not
have either condition.
"Our results indicate that women showing depression are at increased risk
for subsequent preeclampsia and need extra social and psychological support and
close follow-up for symptoms of preeclampsia," the authors conclude.
How depression and anxiety might increase the risk for preeclampsia is
unknown, but the researchers speculate that they might influence the release of
hormones, which could affect blood pressure.
"The next logical step would be to launch a study to examine if therapeutic
interventions... during pregnancy could lower the risk for preeclampsia," Kurki
told Reuters Health. However, Kurki stressed that the findings "are preliminary
and should not induce anxiety among pregnant women."
