The parents of women who experience recurrent miscarriage are more likely to experience IHD. Recurrent miscarriage and IHD may have common patho-physiological pathways and genetic predispositions.
Perinatal and family composition factors have a broad influence on mental health outcomes. These data suggest that the existence of younger, as well as elder siblings may be important.
The data do not provide evidence for the foetal origins of mental disorders but, in the cases of psychotic disorders, and of self-harm, suggest that the early postnatal rather than the antenatal environment may be of greater importance.
Pregnancy complications and cardiovascular disease share some common determinants. It has previously been hypothesized that family history of cardiovascular disease would be associated with low birth weight. Records from 120,317 Scottish births, 1992-2006, were linked to hospital admission and death certificate data for 71,681 pairs of maternal grandparents. There was a negative relation between the birth weight of the baby and the risk of either grandparent's experiencing ischemic heart disease (for a 1-kg increase in birth weight, hazard ratio = 0.86, 95% confidence interval: 0.83, 0.89) or cerebrovascular disease (hazard ratio = 0.82, 95% confidence interval: 0.77, 0.87). Further analysis demonstrated that the associations were explained by increased risks of both delivering a small-for-gestational-age infant and delivering preterm among women whose parents had experienced cardiovascular disease. Adjustment for the mother's characteristics at the time of the birth attenuated the relation, but significant associations persisted: With a 1-kg increase in birth weight, the adjusted hazard ratio for ischemic heart disease = 0.93 (95% confidence interval: 0.89, 0.96) and for cerebrovascular disease = 0.93 (95% confidence interval: 0.89, 0.96). Familial aggregation of common determinants of pregnancy complications and cardiovascular disease is the likely explanation for the relation between an infant's birth weight and the risk of cardiovascular disease in other family members.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.