Outdoor humidity and temperature levels during pregnancy appear to affect the future blood pressure of the unborn baby, according to an international study by the University of Bristol. Although high blood pressure is normal during childhood, these weather-related factors were associated with a different rate of rise.
Previous studies have mostly measured blood pressure at a single time point, mostly focusing on individual exposures, especially air pollution. In this latest study, which was part of the LongITools project, researchers used repeated blood pressure measurements to evaluate the association of a range of prenatal urban environmental exposures with changes in systolic and diastolic blood pressure from childhood to early adulthood.
The study analyzed repeated blood pressure measurements in more than 7,000 participants aged between three and 24 years from the 1990s Bristol Children's Study. The analyzes were repeated in four independent European cohorts in more than 9,000 individuals in Finland, France and the Netherlands. The research team explored 43 different measures of noise, air pollution, the built environment, natural spaces, traffic, meteorology, and the unhealthy food environment, and found that outdoor temperature and humidity before birth can affect changes in blood pressure, especially during pregnancy. Childhood.
Their results were published in JACC: ProgressIt showed that higher humidity was associated with a faster increase in temperature and a slower increase in systolic blood pressure in childhood. Higher humidity was also associated with a faster increase in diastolic blood pressure in childhood. In the UK group, higher levels of air pollution were associated with a faster increase in diastolic blood pressure in childhood and a slower increase in adolescence, but this association was not replicated in other groups. There was little evidence of an association between other urban environmental exposures and changes in systolic or diastolic blood pressure.
“Children with high blood pressure are more likely to have high blood pressure than adults, which may increase the risk of heart disease and stroke as well as kidney disease and vascular dementia,” said Dr. Ana Gonçalves Soares, the study's lead researcher.
“Previous studies have already shown that certain urban environmental exposures during pregnancy are associated with blood pressure in childhood. We were able to expand this further and explore whether these environmental exposures are also associated with trajectories of blood pressure (changes) from childhood to early adulthood.”
“The findings suggest that humidity and temperature during pregnancy can alter a child's blood pressure. More work is needed to understand how weather-related conditions during pregnancy can affect a child's blood pressure to guide cardiovascular disease prevention strategies in later adulthood associated with By environmental exposure before birth.
