AUA MPH Alumna and lead author Arusyak Harutyunyan, MD, MPH (2009) and her coauthors Haroutune K. Armenian, AUA President Emeritus and Professor of Epidemiology and Varduhi Petrosyan, Associate Dean of the School of Public Health, published the article “Interbirth interval and history of previous preeclampsia: a case-control “ in BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, an open access, internationally ranked peer-reviewed academic journal.
This manuscript was developed based on some of the results of Arusyak Harutyunyan’s MPH thesis project – one of the few studies that investigated risk factors for preeclampsia development specifically among women having more than one delivery.
Preeclampsia, one of the hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, is a disorder with a reported incidence of 2%-8% among all pregnancies, accounting for more than 50,000 deaths worldwide each year. Despite extensive research exploring the risk factors and management of preeclampsia, there has been no improvement in predicting who will develop preeclampsia, and there are no protocols for prevention or treatment for this condition other than delivery (even if it is a preterm delivery).
The findings of this study concluded that long interbirth interval (greater than or equal to five years) appeared to be a strong risk factor for preeclampsia development only among women who did not have preeclampsia in their previous pregnancy. This finding may contribute to a new approach in understanding the etiology of preeclampsia and may be useful for developing further recommendations for women who have had preeclampsia in previous pregnancy and are at higher risk for preeclampsia development in subsequent pregnancies.
The article is available here