Children appear to be at greater risk of having high blood pressure when their mothers had the high blood pressure condition called preeclampsia during pregnancy — but this adverse association may be reduced or even eliminated for children who were exposed to higher levels of vitamin D in the womb, according to a study from researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The findings, based on an analysis of data on 754 mother-child pairs in Massachusetts, suggest that higher vitamin D levels in pregnancy may help protect children born to preeclamptic women from developing high blood pressure. High blood pressure in childhood is associated in turn with hypertension and heart disease in adulthood.
The study was published online October 5 in JAMA Network Open.
“There is increasing evidence that cardiovascular disease risk is, to a great extent, programmed in the womb,…
