The analysis reveals that the post -delivery lasts more than you think. And that certain complications of pregnancy can be predicted before conception.
The postpartum lasts more than 6 weeks e It is not at all physiological That everything returns quickly “as before”. It is one of the conclusions of a study that has analyzed the data relating to over 300,000 births to understand how dozens of biological parameters essential for health change before conception, during and after pregnancy.
The research, the widest and most complete ever carried out on the changes that pregnancy brings to the body of women, also suggests the risk of certain complications – such as pre -eclampsia and gestational diabetes – can be deduced from some parameters even before conception. The details of the work are published on Science Advances.
Large database. A group of scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science of Israel studied the anonymized data of blood tests, urine and other analyzes carried out from 2003 to 2020 on healthy pregnancy women, from 20 to 35 years old, who were not taking drugs and who had no chronic diseases. In total, they have been analyzed 44 million physiological measurements concerning over 300,000 pregnancies completed.
Live changes. Routine exams have been collected relating to 76 very common testsas analysis of immune cell levels, red blood cells, inflammation, cholesterol, kidneys and liver health, performed for 4 and a half months before conception at 18 and a half months after childbirth. From these values, scientists have obtained the average value for each test for each week of the period considered. A sort of dynamic profile of how pregnancy was altering or had altered the basic physiological parameters of women.
A total upheaval. How long they took the values a come back as before of pregnancy? 47% of the 76 indicators stabilized at levels similar to those pre-coacing within one month of childbirth. However, as many as 41% of the indicators took more than 10 weeks to stabilize again – with some remarkable records: for example, some measures of liver function and cholesterol have restored after six months, and another, relating to the health of bones and liver, it took a year to return to the norm. The remaining 12% of the parameters instead required 4 to 10 weeks to normalize.
Some measurements of inflammation and concerning blood health have not returned as before for the entire duration of the study (80 weeks), it is not clear whether for the pregnancy itself or if for the change in the lifestyle brought by the arrival of a newborn.
Roller coaster. In general, the indicators have followed several trajectories. Some measurements went up during pregnancy and then drop after childbirth; Others have done the opposite, still others did not only go down or grown to return to the pre-conciminal levels but went far beyond or much under the original values after childbirth, and then stabilized only later. As if the body was trying to compensateexceeding, to change.
Prevent to protect. Another interesting fact, some changes were visible even before conception. I am an example the reduction of certain values of inflammation and the increase in folic acidascribable to a positive change in lifestyle in women who wanted pregnancy. Other not beneficial alterations preceding conception could instead be the light of potential complications in pregnancy, such as the pre-eclampsia (which manifests itself with hypertension and proteins in the urine, and which can be dangerous for the mother and fetus) and the gestational diabetes.
The women who had developed these conditions had in fact different profiles for certain markers than healthy ones, and in some cases, these differences were even more significant before conception. A fact that suggests that, in the future, it will be possible to identify women at risk even before pregnancy began.
