Mothers who are anaemic in the first 100 days of pregnancy have a much higher chance of having a child with congenital heart disease, according to new research from a team including researchers from the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences. As a result, researchers will now investigate whether taking iron supplements before and during pregnancy could help to prevent some heart defects at birth.
Funded by the British Heart Foundation and published in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, the research is the first to have identified a link in the UK population between congenital heart disease (heart conditions that develop in the womb, before a baby is born) and maternal anaemia in early pregnancy. The researchers estimate that maternal anaemia may account for around one in 20 congenital heart disease cases in the UK.
The study looked at data from 16,500 mothers and found that, if the mother was anaemic in the first 100 days of pregnancy, the likelihood of having a child with congenital heart disease was 47 per cent higher than the usual risk of around 1 in 100. This was after adjusting for other factors that can raise the risk of congenital heart disease, such as the mother’s age.
It’s estimated that nearly a quarter of pregnant women in the UK – and over a third of pregnant women globally – have anaemia. Severe anaemia in the later stages of pregnancy is known to cause problems such as low birth weight and premature delivery. But until now, little was known about the effect of anaemia in the early stages of pregnancy, while the fetal heart is developing.
In low- and middle-income countries, where anaemia during pregnancy is much more common, the researchers estimate that it may account for even more cases of congenital heart disease than in the UK.
Read the full story on the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences and the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics website.