BP in Midlife Women: Preterm Birth and Offspring Size as Predictors

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Hello. This is Dr JoAnn Manson, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital.

I'd like to talk with you about a recent study on prior preterm and small-for-gestational-age (SGA) birth in relation to maternal blood pressure during the menopause transition. This was a recent report in the journal Menopause from the SWAN (Study of Women's Health Across the Nation) cohort.

We've known for a long time that certain pregnancy complications, such as preeclampsia, other hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, and gestational diabetes are associated with elevations in blood pressure and heightened cardiovascular risk in the mother.

Less has been known about the relationship between prior preterm or SGA birth and blood pressure trajectory. This was looked at in SWAN among 1008 women who were of diverse races and ethnicities. They had repeated blood pressure measurements. The first was measured before the final menstrual period at an average age of 46, again at the time of menopause, and then up to 10 years past menopause.

Women with a history of having a preterm birth(birth prior to 37 weeks) or a SGA birth (birth weight < 10th percentile) — each reported by about 10% of the women — were compared with women who had only full-term or appropriate-for-gestational-age births.