Do Pregnancy Experiences Predict Cardiovascular Disease in Women?

• Pregnancy impacts risk of cardiovascular disease.
• Guidelines either omit pregnancy or consider it low risk.

We are beginning to learn how different women and men are in response to illness. The role of gender in health was overlooked until the 1990s. As a result, researchers may have missed some important reproductive risk factors for heart disease in women. Heart disease continues to be the leading cause of death in women, and recent literature supports pregnancy experiences as predictors of later life cardiovascular disease in women. This report reviews the literature and calls for primary care providers to collect and include these data when making recommendations for a cardioprotective lifestyle to women in their practice.