The association of maternal hypertensive disorders with neonatal congenital heart disease: analysis of a United States cohort

Abstract

Objective To examine the association of any type of maternal hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP) and neonatal congenital heart diseases (CHD). Study design We compared the prevalence of CHD between neonates born to mothers with HDP to those delivered to mothers without HDP among 24,525,889 hospital records of living infants, from a national database. We controlled for multiple confounding factors by using multiple logistic regression analysis. Results Infants delivered to mothers with HDP had higher prevalence of CHD compared to infants born to mothers without HDP [5.20% vs. 1.47%; aOR: 2.51(2.38–2.64), p < 0.001]. Maternal diabetes was more frequent among infants born to mothers with HDP and was independently associated with CHD [aOR 5.14 (5.04–5.23), p < 0.001]. Conclusion Infants born to mothers with hypertension had almost a threefold increase in CHD compared with those born to mothers without hypertension. Further studies are needed to investigate the underlying mechanism and direction of this association.