14 DAY TRIAL // As the average age of women who get pregnant for the first time increases – due primarily to the widespread availability of in-vitro fertilization treatments – so does the risk of having a heart attack during pregnancy. If this happens during the last trimester, the consequences can be very severe.
Usually, pregnant women are safeguarded from the effects of heart diseases while they are carrying their children, mostly because the heart operates more efficiently to handle increased blood demand. However, since expecting women are older now, they also have higher cholesterol levels.
This increases their likelihood of a heart attack significantly. If such an adverse effect occurs, it produces damage that is significantly more extensive than if it were to affect non-pregnant women.
“We observed worse heart function and a greater area of damage in hearts from the late-pregnancy group, compared to the non-pregnant group,” UCLA postdoctoral fellow and first study author, Dr. Jingyuan Li, explains.