Women who develop high blood pressure after birth at greater risk of chronic hypertension
2021-01-29
(Press-News.org) Washington, DC — Blood pressure that remains elevated over of time — known as chronic hypertension — has been linked to heart disease, which is the leading cause of death in the United States. Recent research has shown that persistent high blood pressure may also increase the risk for stroke and overall mortality. Yet, only about 1 in 4 adults with chronic hypertension have their condition under control, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In a new study to be presented today at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine's (SMFM) annual meeting, The Pregnancy Meeting™, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh will unveil findings that suggest that women who develop high blood pressure during pregnancy and who continue to have elevated blood pressure postpartum are at an increased risk for developing chronic hypertension.
The study looked at 368 women who had normal blood pressure during pregnancy and followed them for six to 18 months after delivery. For six weeks following childbirth, women took their blood pressure at home using a remote monitoring system connected to their smart phones. A total of 5,958 blood pressure readings were collected.
Results found that at their first postpartum visit, nearly half of the women (49.5 percent or 182) had developed high blood pressure. These women had a slower decline in blood pressure in the first six weeks following delivery and higher blood pressure at their postpartum visit compared to the remaining women (50.5 percent or 186) who did not develop high blood pressure.
"By leveraging data from our widely scaled postpartum hypertension remote monitoring program, we were able to discover that a woman's blood pressure in the first six weeks after childbirth appears to be an important indicator of whether she is likely to develop chronic hypertension six to 18 months later," said one of the study's lead authors, Eesha Dave, MD, a resident physician in obstetrics and gynecology at UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital in Pittsburgh.
"This information helps us to better identify women who may be at risk of developing cardiovascular problems later in life and take preventative steps," said another one of the study's lead authors, Alisse Hauspurg, MD, a maternal-fetal medicine subspecialist and assistant professor at University of Pittsburgh.
INFORMATION:
For a copy of the study, please contact Karen Addis at karen@addispr.com; 301-787-2394.
About SMFM
The Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) is a non-profit, membership organization based in Washington, DC. With more than 5,000 physicians, scientists, and women's health professionals around the world, the Society supports the clinical practice of maternal-fetal medicine by providing education, promoting research, and engaging in advocacy to optimize the health of high-risk pregnant women and their babies. SMFM hosts an annual scientific meeting where new ideas and research related to high-risk pregnancies are unveiled and discussed. For more information, visit SMFM.org and connect with the organization on Facebook and Twitter. For the latest 2021 Annual Meeting news and updates, follow the hashtag #smfm21.
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2021-01-29
News reports indicate COVID-19 vaccines are not getting out soon enough nor in adequate supplies to most regions, but there may be a larger underlying problem than shortages. A University of California, Davis, study found that more than a third of people nationwide are either unlikely or at least hesitant to get a COVID-19 vaccine when it becomes available to them.
The results are from public polling of more than 800 English-speaking adults nationwide in a study published online earlier this month in the journal Vaccine.
"Our research indicates that vaccine uptake will be suboptimal ... with 14.8 percent of respondents being unlikely to get vaccinated ...
2021-01-29
WOODS HOLE, Mass. -- The most powerful substance in the human brain for neuronal communication is glutamate. It is by far the most abundant, and it's implicated in all kinds of operations. Among the most amazing is the slow restructuring of neural networks due to learning and memory acquisition, a process called synaptic plasticity. Glutamate is also of deep clinical interest: After stroke or brain injury and in neurodegenerative disease, glutamate can accumulate to toxic levels outside of neurons and damage or kill them.
Shigeki Watanabe of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, a familiar face at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) as a faculty member and researcher, is hot on the ...
2021-01-29
RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- When we step on the car brake upon seeing a red traffic light ahead, a sequence of events unfolds in the brain at lightning speed.
The image of the traffic light is transferred from our eyes to the visual cortex, which, in turn, communicates to the premotor cortex -- a section of the brain involved in preparing and executing limb movements. A signal is then sent to our foot to step on the brake. However, brain region that helps the body go from "seeing" to "stepping" is still a mystery, frustrating neuroscientists and psychologists.
To unpack this "black box," a team of neuroscientists at the University of California, Riverside, has ...
2021-01-29
A new report combining forecasting and expert prediction data, predicts that 125,000 lives could be saved by the end of 2021 if 50% or more of the U.S. population initiated COVID vaccination by March 1, 2021.
"Meta and consensus forecast of COVID-19 targets," developed by Thomas McAndrew, a computational scientist and faculty member at Lehigh University's College of Health, and colleagues, incorporates data from experts and trained forecasters, combining their predictions into a single consensus forecast. In addition McAndrew and his team produce a metaforecast, which is a combination of an ensemble of computational models and their consensus forecast.
In addition to predictions related to the impact of vaccinations, ...
2021-01-29
Researchers at Linköping University, Sweden, have developed a proton trap that makes organic electronic ion pumps more precise when delivering drugs. The new technique may reduce drug side effects, and in the long term, ion pumps may help patients with symptoms of neurological diseases for which effective treatments are not available. The results have been published in Science Advances.
Approximately 6% of the world's population suffer from neurological diseases such as epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, and chronic pain. However, currently available drug delivery methods - mainly tablets and injections - place the drug in locations where it is not required. This can lead to side effects ...
2021-01-29
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- In many ways, our brain and our digestive tract are deeply connected. Feeling nervous may lead to physical pain in the stomach, while hunger signals from the gut make us feel irritable. Recent studies have even suggested that the bacteria living in our gut can influence some neurological diseases.
Modeling these complex interactions in animals such as mice is difficult to do, because their physiology is very different from humans'. To help researchers better understa nd the gut-brain axis, MIT researchers have developed an "organs-on-a-chip" system that replicates interactions between the brain, liver, and colon.
Using that system, the researchers were able to model the influence that microbes living in the gut have on both healthy brain tissue and tissue samples derived ...
2021-01-29
An international team of researchers produced islands of amorphous, non-crystalline material inside a class of new metal alloys known as high-entropy alloys.
This discovery opens the door to applications in everything from landing gears, to pipelines, to automobiles. The new materials could make these lighter, safer, and more energy efficient.
The team, which includes researchers from the University of California San Diego and Berkeley, as well as Carnegie Mellon University and University of Oxford, details their findings in the Jan. 29 issue of Science Advances.
"These present ...
2021-01-29
In 2017, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to three scientists who uncovered the molecular mechanisms that control the circadian rhythm, otherwise known as the "wake-sleep" cycle. To carry out their work, the scientists used the common fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, making this the sixth Nobel to be awarded to research involving it.
Fruitful fruit flies
Life scientists have been using Drosophila for over a century now. First proposed by entomologist Charles W. Woodworth as a model organism, its use in research was pioneered by geneticist Thomas H. Morgan who ran his famous ...
2021-01-29
As any cook knows, some liquids mix well with each other, but others do not. For example, when a tablespoon of vinegar is poured into water, a brief stir suffices to thoroughly combine the two liquids. However, a tablespoon of oil poured into water will coalesce into droplets that no amount of stirring can dissolve. The physics that governs the mixing of liquids is not limited to mixing bowls; it also affects the behavior of things inside cells. It's been known for several years that some proteins behave like liquids, and that some liquid-like proteins don't mix together. However, very little is known about how these liquid-like proteins behave on cellular surfaces.
"The separation between two liquids that won't mix, like oil and water, is known as ...
2021-01-29
January 29, 2021 -- A study at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Columbia University Irving Medical Center has found that Medicaid expansion in 2014 in New York State was associated with a statistically significant reduction in severe maternal morbidity in low-income women during delivery hospitalizations compared with high-income women. The decrease was even more pronounced in racial and ethnic minority women than in White women. Until now there was little research on the link between ACA Medicaid expansion and maternal health outcomes. The findings are published online in the journal of the International Anesthesia Research Society, Anesthesia & Analgesia.
"Our findings indicate that the 2014 ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Women who develop high blood pressure after birth at greater risk of chronic hypertension
