Letter to the Editor
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World J Clin Cases. Oct 6, 2022; 10(28): 10384-10386
Published online Oct 6, 2022. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v10.i28.10384
Are pregnancy-associated hypertensive disorders so sweet?
Costas Thomopoulos, Ioannis Ilias
Costas Thomopoulos, Department of Cardiology, Elena Venizelou General and Maternity Hospital, Athens GR-11521, Greece
Ioannis Ilias, Department of Endocrinology, Elena Venizelou General and Maternity Hospital, Athens GR-11521, Greece
Author contributions: Both Authors conceived, wrote and revised this submission.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Both Authors declare that they have no conflict of interest to report.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Ioannis Ilias, MD, PhD, Consultant Physician-Scientist, Department of Endocrinology, Elena Venizelou General and Maternity Hospital, 2, Elena Venizelou Square, Athens GR-11521, Greece. iiliasmd@yahoo.com
Received: April 18, 2022
Peer-review started: April 18, 2022
First decision: June 7, 2022
Revised: June 10, 2022
Accepted: August 17, 2022
Article in press: August 17, 2022
Published online: October 6, 2022
Processing time: 162 Days and 0.9 Hours
Abstract

Worldwide, one in seven pregnancies is complicated by some form of diabetes, with a rising trend. Additionally, hypertension is one of the main causes of morbidity and mortality for both the pregnant woman and the fetus and also contributes to premature birth. In a cohort study of pregnant women with diabetes, which was recently published in this journal, at least 84.5% of the subjects had hypertension. This rate of hypertension might be among the highest reported thus far. In the medical literature, approximately 20% of women with diabetes during pregnancy have various pregnancy-associated hypertensive disorders. Racial/ethnic differences, apparently, were not implicated in this elevated rate of hypertension: Although black and Hispanic women have a twofold higher rate of hypertension in pregnancy compared to white women, 75% of the subjects in the study in question were white. Thus, the impressive finding delivered by this large study, merits additional clarifications.

Keywords: Pregnancy; Hypertension; Pre-eclampsia; Diabetes; Gestational diabetes; Human

Core Tip: In a recent large study of pregnant women with diabetes, more than 84.5% of the subjects had hypertension, a rate which is fourfold higher than in the literature. Such a finding merits additional clarification.