Congenital heart defects among mothers increase heart defect risk in children

They looked at more than 2 million children and compared the risk of congenital heart defects in children with and without a parent with a Congenital heart defects.

The study, which is published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation, found the risk of congenital heart defects was nearly double in the offspring of affected women compared to the offspring of affected men.

In addition, compared to children of women without Congenital heart defects, children of women with Congenital heart defects had more than five times the risk of having a heart defect. For children of men with Congenital heart defects, the risk was triple.

These findings are more important in genetic counseling and prenatal investigation, especially now that an increasing number of persons with congenital heart defects are surviving to adulthood and are healthy enough to parent children.

Researchers hence ended with a question as to why heart defects were more common among the offspring of women with Congenital heart defects.