Miscarriage has been linked to heart disease in a new study in Germany. Researchers found that those women who’d suffered three or more miscarriages had their risk of heart attack go up by 500%.
Of the 11,500 women, all between their mid 30s and mid 60s, 2,876 had reported miscarriages with 69 suffering three or more. It was these 69 who were at the highest risk of heart problems in later life. Researchers have suggested that this could help doctors diagnose heart problems in patients.
“It’s known in some cases of multiple miscarriages that the women have previously undiagnosed heart and circulatory disease, or significant risk for the disease, so they may have an increased heart attack risk which is unrelated to the pregnancy,” said a spokeswoman for the British Heart Foundation.
Researchers also noted that the risk lowered when other factors such as smoking and obesity – that could contribute to both miscarriage and heart attacks – were removed from the findings. More investigation is needed to discover if miscarriage can directly increase your risk of heart problems.
“It is possible that there is some common predisposing risk factor for both miscarriage and heart disease. During pregnancy, it is manifested by increased risk of miscarriage, and later in life, it manifests itself as an increase in heart disease risk,” explained Professor Gordon Smith, from Cambridge University.
