Is body composition different in neonates of mothers with hypertensive disorders of pregnancy?

Neonates of mothers with hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP) are at increased risk of cardiovascular complications later in life, although the etiology for this risk is unclear. Neonatal adiposity, as measured by body composition (BC), is also associated with future health. Thus, we compared BC in infants born to women with HDP to BC in infants of normotensive mothers. We hypothesized that neonates in the HDP group will have increased adiposity at birth. This was a retrospective cohort study of term infants at our tertiary institution from March 2018 to June 2019. BC and % body fat (%BF) are measured routinely on all term neonates with a validated anthropometric model using birth weight, length and suprailiac skin fold thickness (SFT). Eligible subjects included women with HDP identified from our perinatal database and matched to normotensive mothers by gestational age, sex, and delivery date. Median SFT and %BF were obtained and a Mann Whitney U and Chi-squared tests were performed with alpha set at 0.05 for significance. 142 neonates were identified and compared to 150 controls. 19(13%) had chronic hypertension, 77(55%) gestational hypertension, 31(22%) preeclampsia without severe features and 15(10%) preeclampsia with severe features. Demographic characteristics were similar between both groups. The rate of NICU admissions (8.5% vs.5.3%) and Induction (70% vs 35%) was higher but not statistically significant in the HDP group. The rate of low birth weight babies was not significantly different (6 vs 4 p=0.25). SFT was not significantly different (median 4.6mm vs 4.40mm, p = 0.09) but the %BF was higher in the study group (median 13.15 vs 11.72 p=0.01). When chronic hypertensives were excluded from the study group, the findings remained the same. Percent body fat is higher in neonates of mothers with hypertensive disorders of pregnancy. Alterations in adiposity may contribute to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease later in life.View Large Image Figure ViewerDownload Hi-res image Download (PPT)