Exercise May Reduce Risk
of Pregnancy Complication

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women who are physically active during the year before pregnancy and during early pregnancy may be less likely to develop high blood pressure during pregnancy, the results of a new study suggest.

The results of the study suggest that current public health efforts to increase physical activity may help reduce the risk of high blood pressure during pregnancy, according to the study's authors.

Little is understood about pregnancy-induced high blood pressure, a condition known as preeclampsia. It poses a risk to both the mother and fetus. In severe cases, preeclampsia can lead to maternal seizures and, in rare cases, to death.

Writing in the June issue of the journal Hypertension, Dr. Michelle A. Williams, of the Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, and colleagues note that previous research showed that recreational physical activity during the first 20 weeks of pregnancy reduces the risk of the complication. However, the effects of pre-conception exercise and of typical daily activities remain unstudied.

To investigate, Williams and her colleagues evaluated 201 women with preeclampsia who delivered between 1998 and 2001, and 383 women who did not develop high blood pressure during pregnancy. Women were asked about recreational activities, walking and stair climbing for the year prior to conception and the first 20 weeks of their pregnancies.

Risk was reduced by about a third in women who had participated in any recreational physical activity during early pregnancy or during the year before pregnancy, the researchers report.

The pace of walking was associated with reduced risk, with most benefit noted for those who walked at a rate of three miles an hour or faster, according to the report.

And even among women who did not exercise regularly, climbing one to four flights of stairs every day appeared to confer some protection.

SOURCE: Hypertension 2003;41:1273-1280.

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