by Women who suffer from a low iron level during pregnancy have much more likely to have a baby with heart disease. Experts have found in a “Gamechanger” fizzy verse.
For the first time, researchers have associated anemia in early pregnancy and innate heart disease when heart problems develop in the womb and are present from birth.
As a result of the results, the researchers now estimate that anemia in pregnant women in Great Britain can make up around 20 cases of 20 innate heart disease.
The disease is the most common type of birth defect that has diagnosed an average of 13 babies every day in the UK and is a main cause of causes of death.
Almost a quarter of the pregnant women in Great Britain – and more than a third of pregnant women worldwide – are believed to have anemia.
As part of the new work, published in Bjog: an international journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, experts will now examine whether the use of iron preparations in front of and during pregnancy can help prevent heart defects.
The study examined data from 16,500 mothers and found that the probability of having a child with innate heart disease is much higher than usual if the mother was anemic in the first 100 days of pregnancy (around three months).
The study states: “After adapting to potential disruptive factors, the likelihood of giving a congenital heart-diagnosed child was 47% higher for anemic mothers.”
It is already known that severe anemia in the later stages of pregnancy leads to problems such as low birth weight and early delivery. However, this is the first time that anemia was identified as a problem in the early stages.
Associate Professor Duncan Sparrow from the University of Oxford, who headed the study financed by the British Heart Foundation, said: “Knowing that early maternal anemia is so harmful could be a gamuchang worldwide.
“Since iron deficiency is the main cause of many cases of anemia, the widespread iron supplement for women – both when trying a baby and pregnancy – could help prevent innate heart diseases in many newborns before it has developed.”
The researchers found a connection between anemia during pregnancy and innate heart disease in mice.
To examine this link, they used anonymized data from GP recordings to see what happened in mothers and babies.
More than 2,700 mothers who had a child with innate heart disease were identified and agreed with women whose children did not have the disease.
Then blood underground results from the first 100 days of each pregnancy were used to determine whether the mothers had anemia at that time.
In the group of mothers who had a child with innate heart disease, 4.4% had anemia.
This was compared with 2.8% of mothers with anemia, the children of which did not develop any innate heart disease.
Dr. Sonya Babu-Narayan, clinical director of the British Heart Foundation and cardiologist of British Heart, said: “If it turns out that a low iron is one of the guilty, it can fill up the iron level during the early pregnancy if the baby’s heart forms, a significant advantage for the lifelong heart health of a baby.
“Larger studies are required to confirm and determine the finding of which type of innate heart disease can be associated with low iron.
“It is also important to note that the usual risk of a child with a congenital heart disease is about 1%. Even with the increase that this study suggests, the individual risk for people without family history of innate heart diseases is still relatively low.”
