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WEDNESDAY, Aug. 20 (HealthDay News) -- Women who've experienced the pregnancy complication known as preeclampsia face a much greater risk of end-stage renal disease, new research suggests.
In fact, says the report in the Aug. 21 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, the rate of end-stage renal disease (ESRD) was between 3.2 and 15.5 times greater for women who had preeclampsia in pregnancy.
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"If you have had preeclampsia, you should be aware that you are at increased risk for renal and cardiovascular disease, and you should try to reduce that risk," said study author Dr. Bjorn Vikse, a researcher at the University of Bergen in Norway.
Preeclampsia is a complication of pregnancy characterized by high blood pressure, protein in the urine, and swelling, as well as more serious problems, according to the National Institutes of Health. Symptoms resolve when the baby is born.
"Historically, the thought was that after delivery, everything was fine. But preeclampsia isn't benign, and it may initiate a cascade of damage that takes years to develop into clinically relevant renal disease," said Dr. Robert Provenzano, chief of nephrology at St. John Hospital and Medical Center in Detroit.
"The take-home message from this study is that any young woman who has had any variant of preeclampsia and eclampsia needs to be monitored for ongoing or recurrent kidney disease, high blood pressure and diabetes," Provenzano said.
The current study looked at data from the Norwegian Medical Birth Registry, which has information on all births in Norway since 1967. This study included 570,433 women who gave birth between 1967 and 1991, and data from up to three pregnancies was included.
End-stage renal disease developed in 477 women, an average of 17 years after delivery.
In women who'd been pregnant one or more times, those who experienced preeclampsia during the first pregnancy had a 4.7 times greater risk of developing ESRD. For women who'd been pregnant two or more times, preeclampsia during the first pregnancy resulted in a 3.2 times higher risk of ESRD. Women who'd been pregnant three or more times, and who'd had preeclampsia during two or three of those pregnancies had the highest risk -- 15.5 times that of women who'd never had preeclampsia.
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