When a woman gives birth, most doctors focus on the baby and the mother's immediate recovery. But what if that moment could also reveal something about her heart health decades later? That's the question researchers at McGill University in Montreal are asking — and the answer could change how millions of women are screened for heart disease.
Heart disease is the number one killer of women worldwide, yet the tools doctors use to predict who will develop it were built mostly from data on older men. Those tools miss factors that are uniquely important to women's health. "Heart disease is the leading cause of death in women, yet existing risk tools were developed in older populations and ignore factors unique to women," said Robert Platt, a professor of epidemiology at McGill who helped lead the research.
Pregnancy complications have long been linked to higher heart disease risk later in life, but there was no practical way to identify which young women faced the greatest danger. Now, a new study published in the journal JACC: Advances offers a solution.
The research team analyzed health records from more than 260,000 women in the United Kingdom between the ages of 15 and 45 who had given birth. These women were tracked for almost four years after delivery. Using this data, the researchers built a prediction model that spots warning signs much earlier than traditional screening allows.
What they found: several pregnancy-related and other health factors can flag future heart risk — factors not included in any existing risk calculator. These include high blood pressure during pregnancy, gestational diabetes (a type of diabetes that develops during pregnancy), preterm birth, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), depression, thyroid disorders, oral contraceptive use, and social deprivation.
"Millions of women who give birth each year are never considered candidates for cardiovascular risk assessment simply because of their age," said co-author Kristian Filion, a professor in McGill's departments of medicine and epidemiology. Many younger women are told they have nothing to worry about, when in reality, hidden warning signs may already be there.
If this new tool became part of routine postpartum care — the checkups women receive after giving birth — it could flag high-risk patients for closer monitoring, lifestyle advice, or specialist referrals before any symptoms appear. That could mean preventing a heart attack or stroke years down the road.
The researchers are now planning to test the model using data from Canada and the United States. Eventually, they hope to build a simple calculator that could be built into electronic health records, automatically alerting doctors when a patient's history suggests elevated heart risk. For the millions of women who pass through hospitals and clinics every year, this could be the start of a much smarter, earlier approach to protecting their hearts.