Pregnancy smoking causes permanent vascular lesions in children
Smoking during
pregnancy causes a permanent thickening of arterial walls in children,
increasing the risk of cerebral infarction and stroke, according to a Dutch
study.
The ARYA
(Atherosclerotic Risk in Young Adults) study, presented at the Annual Conference
on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention of the American Heart
Association (AHA), is the first to demonstrate this association, says Dr. Cuno
Uiterwaal Medical Center University of Utrecht, in a statement from the AHA.
The study
involved 732 participants born between 1970 and 1973. Their cardiovascular risk
was measured in 1999-2000.
Adults whose
mothers smoked during pregnancy (215 mothers) had thicker carotid wall 13.4
microns compared to those whose mothers did not smoke during pregnancy,
according to the thickness measurement intima-media ultrasound.
Even after
adjusting for other risk factors such as age, sex, body mass index (weight
ratio of the square of height), pulse pressure and cholesterol, intima- media
remained 9.4 microns thicker in adults exposed in utero to smoking.
Similarly,
taking into account the current parental smoking and the participants did not
change this association.
The association
appeared dose-dependent, the most exposed in utero with the largest
intima-media thickness.
The researchers
determined that the pregnancy was a critical period for the development of
lesions associated with smoking as comparing children whose mothers smoked
during pregnancy but was not smoking at the time of the study and the children
whose mothers did not smoke at all, the first had a higher intima-media
thickness.
However, there
was no difference between children whose mothers smoked during pregnancy but
not after and children whose mothers did not smoke during pregnancy but smoked
after.
"There is a
possibility that the constituents of cigarette smoke pass through the placenta
and directly damage the cardiovascular system of the fetus," said Dr.
Uiterwaal. "These lesions seem permanent (...)," he adds.
He recalls that
in the early 70s, about 30% of pregnant women smoked, but that rate is now down
to between 5 and 7%.
However, "a significant number of women still
smoke during pregnancy." "This is one more reason to encourage
pregnant women to stop smoking," he saysSHARE THIS POST
