FREE NEJM E-TOC    HOME   |   SUBSCRIBE   |   CURRENT ISSUE   |   PAST ISSUES   |   COLLECTIONS   |   Search Term  Advanced Search

Sign in | Get NEJM's E-Mail Table of Contents — Free | Subscribe

Volume 344:867-872 March 22, 2001 Number 12 Next

	Full Text PDF Add to Personal Archive Add to Citation Manager Notify a Friend E-mail When Cited PubMed Citation

ABSTRACT

Background There is an inherited maternal predisposition to preeclampsia. Whether there is a paternal component, however, is not known.

Methods We used records of the Utah Population Database to identify 298 men and 237 women born in Utah between 1947 and 1957 whose mothers had had preeclampsia during their pregnancy. For each man and woman in the study group, we identified two matched, unrelated control subjects who were not the products of pregnancies complicated by preeclampsia. We then identified 947 children of the 298 male study subjects and 830 children of the 237 female study subjects who had been born between 1970 and 1992. These children were matched to offspring of the control subjects (1973 offspring of the male control group and 1658 offspring of the female control group). Factors associated with preeclampsia were identified, and odds ratios were calculated with the use of stepwise logistic-regression analysis.

Results In the group of men whose mothers had had preeclampsia (the male study group), 2.7 percent of the offspring (26 of 947) were born of pregnancies complicated by preeclampsia, as compared with 1.3 percent of the offspring (26 of 1973) in the male control group. In the female study group, 4.7 percent of the pregnancies (39 of 830) were complicated by preeclampsia, as compared with 1.9 percent (32 of 1658) in the female control group. After adjustment for the offspring's year of birth, maternal parity, and the offspring's gestational age at delivery, the odds ratio for an adult whose mother had had preeclampsia having a child who was the product of a pregnancy complicated by preeclampsia was 2.1 (95 percent confidence interval, 1.0 to 4.3; P=0.04) in the male study group and 3.3 (95 percent confidence interval, 1.5 to 7.5; P=0.004) in the female study group.

Conclusions Both men and women who were the product of a pregnancy complicated by preeclampsia were significantly more likely than control men and women to have a child who was the product of a pregnancy complicated by preeclampsia.

Source Information

From the Departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology (M.S.E., M.B.F., J.C., M.W.V.) and Oncological Services (A.F., R.K., G.M.), University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City.

Address reprint requests to Dr. Esplin at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Utah, Rm. 2B200, 50 N. Medical Dr., Salt Lake City, UT 84132, or at mesplin{at}hsc.utah.edu.

Full Text of this Article

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Trogstad, L., Magnus, P., Skjaerven, R., Stoltenberg, C. (2008). Previous abortions and risk of pre-eclampsia. Int J Epidemiol 37: 1333-1340 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Esplin, M. S., O'Brien, E., Fraser, A., Kerber, R. A., Clark, E., Simonsen, S. E., Holmgren, C., Mineau, G. P., Varner, M. W. (2008). Estimating Recurrence of Spontaneous Preterm Delivery. Obstet Gynecol 112: 516-523 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Cui, Y., Kang, G., Sun, K., Qian, M., Romero, R., Fu, W. (2008). Gene-Centric Genomewide Association Study via Entropy. Genetics 179: 637-650 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Hiby, S.E., Regan, L., Lo, W., Farrell, L., Carrington, M., Moffett, A. (2008). Association of maternal killer-cell immunoglobulin-like receptors and parental HLA-C genotypes with recurrent miscarriage. Hum Reprod 23: 972-976 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Hammoud, A. O., Gibson, M., Peterson, C. M., Kerber, R. A., Mineau, G. P., Hatasaka, H. (2008). Quantification of the Familial Contribution to Mullerian Anomalies. Obstet Gynecol 111: 378-384 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Anderson, C. M., Lopez, F., Zimmer, A., Benoit, J. N. (2006). Placental Insufficiency Leads to Developmental Hypertension and Mesenteric Artery Dysfunction in Two Generations of Sprague-Dawley Rat Offspring. Biol. Reprod. 74: 538-544 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Roberts, J. M., Gammill, H. S. (2005). Preeclampsia: Recent Insights. Hypertension 46: 1243-1249 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Skjaerven, R., Vatten, L. J, Wilcox, A. J, Ronning, T., Irgens, L. M, Lie, R. T. (2005). Recurrence of pre-eclampsia across generations: exploring fetal and maternal genetic components in a population based cohort. BMJ 331: 877- [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Caughey, A. B., Stotland, N. E., Washington, A. E., Escobar, G. J. (2005). Maternal Ethnicity, Paternal Ethnicity, and Parental Ethnic Discordance: Predictors of Preeclampsia. Obstet Gynecol 106: 156-161 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Freed, K.A., Cooper, D.W., Brennecke, S.P., Moses, E.K. (2005). Detection of CAG repeats in pre-eclampsia/eclampsia using the repeat expansion detection method. Mol Hum Reprod 11: 481-487 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Astolfi, P., De Pasquale, A., Zonta, L.A. (2004). Late paternity and stillbirth risk. Hum Reprod 19: 2497-2501 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Hiby, S. E., Walker, J. J., O'Shaughnessy, K. M., Redman, C. W.G., Carrington, M., Trowsdale, J., Moffett, A. (2004). Combinations of Maternal KIR and Fetal HLA-C Genes Influence the Risk of Preeclampsia and Reproductive Success. JEM 200: 957-965 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Wolf, M., Shah, A., Jimenez-Kimble, R., Sauk, J., Ecker, J. L., Thadhani, R. (2004). Differential Risk of Hypertensive Disorders of Pregnancy among Hispanic Women. J. Am. Soc. Nephrol. 15: 1330-1338 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Roberts, J. M., Pearson, G., Cutler, J., Lindheimer, M. (2003). Summary of the NHLBI Working Group on Research on Hypertension During Pregnancy. Hypertension 41: 437-445 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Basso, O., Weinberg, C. R., Baird, D. D., Wilcox, A. J., Olsen, J. (2003). Subfecundity as a Correlate of Preeclampsia: A Study within the Danish National Birth Cohort. Am J Epidemiol 157: 195-202 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Reimer, T., Koczan, D., Gerber, B., Richter, D., Thiesen, H.J., Friese, K. (2002). Microarray analysis of differentially expressed genes in placental tissue of pre-eclampsia: up-regulation of obesity-related genes. Mol Hum Reprod 8: 674-680 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Zusterzeel, P L M, Morsche, R t., Raijmakers, M T M, Roes, E M, Peters, W H M, Steegers, E A P (2002). Paternal contribution to the risk for pre-eclampsia. J. Med. Genet. 39: 44-45 [Full Text]  
• Conde-Agudelo, A., Heyborne, K., Fausett, M. B., Esplin, M. S., Varner, M. W. (2001). Paternal and Maternal Components of the Predisposition to Preeclampsia. NEJM 345: 149-150 [Full Text]  
• Pipkin, F. B. (2001). Risk Factors for Preeclampsia. NEJM 344: 925-926 [Full Text]