Extreme Hypertension During Pregnancy Can Cause Kidney Disease, Study Suggests

Extreme hypertension or dangerously high blood pressure during pregnancy can increase the risk of developing end-stage kidney disease or kidney failure later in life, a study has suggested.

Extreme hypertension or preeclampsia is known to be one of the major risk factors associated with pregnancy. Around 10 million expecting mothers worldwide develop dangerously high blood pressure and nearly 76,000 die due to it, according to a 2018 study published in the journal Gynecological Endocrinology.

Previous studies have suggested that extreme hypertension can increase the risk of several chronic health problems, including cardiovascular diseases and heart failure, later in life.

The latest research was led by a group of academics from the University College Cork in Ireland and focused on the association between preeclampsia and the risk of end-stage kidney disease. The study suggested that expecting mothers with dangerously high blood pressure are at greater risk of developing this illness than women with normal blood pressure during pregnancy.

The research, which was published in the medical journal PLoS Medicine last month, found that women who had preeclampsia during pregnancy were five times more likely to suffer from kidney failure than those with normal blood pressure.

For the study, the research team analyzed data of nearly 2.67 million births that took place during the years from 1982 to 2012. Among the 1.37 million women participants in the study, more than 67,000, or 4.9 percent, developed extreme hypertension during one of the pregnancies and a total of 410 participants developed end-stage kidney failure later in life, the study noted.

The study also found that women who had dangerously high blood pressure during two pregnancies were seven times more likely to suffer from kidney failure than those who had normal blood pressure.

“This study shows that pre-eclampsia is a sex-specific, independent risk factor for the subsequent development of end-stage kidney disease,” lead researcher Ali Khashan, who is a public health researcher at University College Cork in Ireland, told Reuters.

While analyzing the data, the research team took into consideration other factors, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, chronic urinary tract problems, autoimmune diseases and genetic disorders, that can lead to end-stage kidney disease.

They found out that “the overall end-stage kidney disease risk remains small, and women with a history of preeclampsia should not be overly concerned."

The study was not a controlled experiment that was designed to prove the direct link between preeclampsia and kidney failure.

“We were able to account for maternal obesity and comorbidities such as diabetes, and the reported results are independent of these factors. However, these factors cannot be ruled out completely as potential mediators between preeclampsia and end-stage kidney disease,” Khashan said.