University study reveals pregnancy risks in mature women

By Caribbean Medical News Staff
According to an extensive cohort study carried out at the University of Eastern Finland, the risks associated with gestational diabetes, overweight, smoking and pre-eclampsia are higher in advanced maternal age than in younger expectant mothers. Many of the risk factors related to pregnancy are more detrimental when the expectant mother is over 35.
Women who give birth over the age of 35 are seen as mothers who give birth in their advanced maternal age. In the western world, advanced maternal age has been a growing trend over the past decades. One in five women in Finland who gave birth in 2013 was over 35 years old.
In her doctoral thesis, Reeta Lamminpää, MHSc, studied nearly 700,000 expectant mothers and their new-born children by combining the data of 1997-2008 available from three national-level registers: the Finnish Medical Birth Register, the Finnish Hospital Discharge Register and the Finnish Register of Congenital Malformations. Expectant mothers were studied in four diverse risk groups with the help of extensive records.
The comparison between age and an additional risk factor on problems during pregnancy and the outcome of childbirth were studied in four risk groups: expectant mothers diagnosed with pre-eclampsia, expectant mothers who smoked, expectant mothers who were overweight and obese, and expectant mothers diagnosed with gestational diabetes. The outcome of childbirth in advanced maternal age was compared to the outcome of younger mothers under 35.
Results from all four risk groups revealed the risks associated with pregnancy and childbirth were higher in advanced maternal age than in younger expectant mothers. Interestingly, the age of over 35 was not a significant independent risk factor, but the risks increased when advanced maternal age was combined with an additional risk factor, smoking or obesity.
The four advanced maternal age groups clearly constitute a risk group that should be provided with enhanced guidance within maternity care. Early detection of the risk groups would make it possible to guide mothers to further treatment at an earlier stage and therefore could help reduce the risks to both mother and foetus.
On a more hopeful note, the majority of expectant mothers over 35 who did not engage in bad lifestyle habits had no complications in the pregnancy and childbirth.