NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Complications during pregnancy--such as preterm delivery, low birth weight and pregnancy-induced high blood pressure--occur more often in teens than in older women, according to new research.

Researchers based at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia found that adolescents were more likely than women at least 20 years old to have a preterm delivery, meaning the baby was born after a pregnancy lasting less than 37 weeks.

Teens were also more than twice as likely to develop eclampsia as older women. Eclampsia is a life-threatening condition in which a woman has convulsive seizures in late pregnancy or during the first week after delivery. It can result from dangerously high blood pressure, a condition in pregnancy known as preeclampsia, which can affect as many as 1 in 10 first pregnancies.

But the association between pregnancy risks and age is not straightforward, for the results also suggest that teens may actually have a lower risk of certain complications. Dr. Chineta R. Eure and colleagues also found that younger women were less likely than older women to require a Cesarean section or an operative vaginal delivery during the birth, in which the baby is delivered using forceps or a vacuum.

Eure and colleagues base their findings on a review of deliveries among 14,718 adolescents and 11,830 older women over a 15-year study period. The investigators measured whether younger mothers had an increased risk of complications such as preeclampsia, eclampsia, preterm delivery, low birth weight in their babies and C-sections, relative to older mothers.

Along with having a higher incidence of pregnancy complications, women who were 19 or younger were also more likely than older mothers to be African American, unmarried and have a sexually transmitted disease, the authors note.

Reporting in the recent issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Eure's team says that the risks of complications changed according to the age of the young mother. Relative to women at least 20 years old, teen mothers younger than 15 were more likely to experience preeclampsia, preterm delivery and low birth weight in their babies, and had a more than threefold higher risk of eclampsia, the report indicates.

Young mothers between the ages of 15 and 19 were also almost twice as likely as older mothers to experience eclampsia.

However, younger mothers were also less likely to require C-section or operative vaginal delivery than older mothers, with those under 15 years of age undergoing either of those procedures slightly over half as often as mothers over 20.

The authors note that they did not take into account other factors besides age in teen mothers that could have influenced their pregnancy outcomes, and so cannot say, definitively, that younger age is the reason these women may have higher risks.

"Development of appropriate pregnancy prevention programs is invaluable in adolescents," Eure and colleagues conclude. "These programs should target younger adolescents who are at increased risk for adverse pregnancy outcomes."

SOURCE: American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 2002;186:918-920.

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