Prohypertensive effect of gestational personal exposure to fine particulate matter. prospective cohort study in non-smoking and non-obese pregnant women

Abstract

Exposure to fine particulate matter (PM) is a recognized risk factor for elevated blood pressure (BP) and cardiovascular disease in adults, and this prospective cohort study was undertaken to evaluate whether gesta-tional exposure to PM2.5 has a prohypertensive effect. We measured personal exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) by personal air monitoring in the second trimester of pregnancy among 431 women, and BP values in the third trimester were obtained from medical records of prenatal care clinics. In the general estimating equation model, the effect of PM 2.5 on BP was adjusted for relevant covariates such as maternal age, education, parity, gesta-tional weight gain (GWG), prepregnancy BMI, environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), and blood lead level. Systolic blood pressure (SBP) increased in a linear fashion across a dosage of PM2.5 and on average augmented by 6.1 mm Hg (95% CI, 0.6-11.6) with log unit of PM 2.5 concentration. Effects of age, maternal education, prepre-gnancy BMI, blood lead level, and ETS were insignificant. Women with excessive gestational weight gain ([18 kg) had higher mean SBP parameters by 5.5 mmHg (95% CI, 2.7-8.3). In contrast, multiparous women had significantly lower SBP values (coeff. = -4.2 mm Hg; 95% CI, -6.8 to -1.6). Similar analysis performed for diastolic blood pressure (DBP) has demonstrated that PM2.5 also affected DBP parameters (coeff. = 4.1; 95% CI, -0.02 to 8.2), but at the border significance level. DBP values were positively associated with the excessive GWG (coeff. = 2.3; 95% CI, 0.3-4.4) but were inversely related to parity (coeff. = -2.7; 95% CI, -4.6 to -0.73). In the observed cohort, the exposure to fine particulate matter during pregnancy was associated with increased maternal blood pressure. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.