Stress played down as pregnancy risk
5:00AM
Thursday April 10, 2008
Being stressed out during the first half of pregnancy may be unhealthy, but it won't increase a woman's risk of developing a serious complication known as pre-eclampsia, Dutch researchers have found.
Stress also didn't influence a woman's likelihood of developing a related condition known as gestational hypertension, in which blood pressure climbs to dangerous levels during pregnancy.
"Of course too much psychosocial stress is not good for a woman's health. But women who have a lot of work stress or other kind of stress should not be afraid of getting pre-eclampsia or gestational hypertension," Dr Karlijn Vollebregt of the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam, the study's lead author, said.
Pre-eclampsia and gestational hypertension can harm the mother and fetus, Dr Vollebregt and her colleagues note in their report, published in BJOG, an international journal of obstetrics and gynaecology. Established risk factors include obesity, high blood pressure and older age.
