Filed under: In The News, Pregnancy Health, Research Reveals
Credit: Getty Images
Now, you can add an increase in stroke rates to their list of health concerns.
According to the Wall Street Journal, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have found the rate of pregnant women being hospitalized for strokes rose 47 percent between 1994-95 and 2006-7, while the rate rose 83 percent for women who had given birth within the last three months.
Now, those numbers are still very low, the newspaper reports, with just .22 hospitalizations for every 1,000 deliveries, but, still, the numbers have experts concerned.
The findings, published in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association, could be a result of pregnant women being at risk more and more often for things such as obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure, all risk factors for stroke, the Journal reports.
Lead study author Elena Kuklina, an epidemiologist at the CDC's heart disease and stroke prevention division, tells the newspaper women should get general health exams before they plan to get pregnant to determine any issues that could be reversed.
