Prepregnancy cardiovascular risk factor clusters increased the risk of stillbirth: JAHA

Pregnancy diabetes posed the highest risk, followed by prepregnancy hypertension (95% CI, 2.27–2.63), smoking (95% CI, 1.58–1.67), and unhealthy body mass index (95% CI, 1.31–1.35). These findings were obtained from the analysis of 16 groups defined by the four binary risk factors. 2 out of 6 risk combinations, mostly those involving diabetes, showed the absolute extra risk related to the biological interaction between 2 risk variables.

There were clear racial differences, with non-Hispanic Black women having the highest absolute and relative odds of stillbirth-nearly twice as high as non-Hispanic White mothers.

Overall, this study demonstrated a substantial correlation between the risk of stillbirth, specific risk clusters, and prepregnancy cardiovascular risk factor scores. This research created 16 different risk clusters by combining four binary risk variables, and they discovered that the relationships between these clusters with stillbirth varied, with some single risk factors (where no other factors were present) exhibiting larger connections.

Source:

Nie, J., Rezende, L. F. M., Ferrari, G., Qiu, Y., Wang, X., Huang, W., Niu, Z., Chen, X., & Aune, D. (2025). Association of prepregnancy cardiovascular risk factors clusters with stillbirth risk across racial and ethnic groups: A nationwide population-based study of 31.4 million singleton births and 131 047 stillbirths. Journal of the American Heart Association. https://doi.org/10.1161/JAHA.124.042319