New Delhi: Being anaemic during pregnancy could be linked to a 47 per cent higher chance of the child having a heart condition at birth, according to a study conducted on women in the UK. Anaemia, or iron deficiency, has been studied to be common among people with congenital heart disease – in which one has heart defects at birth affecting the organ’s function.
“We already know that the risk of congenital heart disease can be raised by a variety of factors, but these results develop our understanding of anaemia. Knowing that early maternal anaemia is so damaging could be a game changer worldwide,” corresponding author Duncan B. Sparrow, from the University of Oxford, UK, said.
In this study, published in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, the researchers analysed health records of women who became pregnant between January 1998 and October 2020.
Over 2,700 women participants had a child diagnosed with a heart problem at birth, while 13,880 women did not. Haemoglobin levels are measured in the first 100 days of pregnancy, according to the country’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines.
More than 120 children with congenital heart disease and 390 children with normal heart function were found to have had anaemia.
“This is the first study in a UK population that demonstrates an association between maternal anaemia in early pregnancy and CHD (congenital heart disease) in offspring, demonstrating a 47 per cent higher odds of CHD in the child,” the authors wrote.
In a 2021 study published in Nature Communications journal, the researchers had identified anaemia in pregnant mice as a risk factor for causing heart defects in offspring mice, which was “previously unknown”.
The team said that the effects of anaemia in mid-to-late pregnancy on the foetus’s development are well understood and include a low weight of the child at birth.
However, evidence on the link between anaemia in pregnancy and congenital heart disease in children is “mixed and weak”, they said.
In this study, the team looked at the link between anaemia in early pregnancy and the risk of the child being born with a heart condition.
“Because iron deficiency is the root cause of many cases of anaemia, widespread iron supplementation for women – both when trying for a baby and when pregnant – could help prevent congenital heart disease in many newborns before it has developed,” Sparrow said.
The health records analysed were taken from the UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink GOLD database.
