According to a new study published in The New England Journal of Medicine, healthy pregnant women who take extra vitamins C and E will not lower their risk of developing preeclampsia.

The study looked at 1,877 heatlhy women who were pregnant with their first child. They found that taking large doses of vitamins C and E neither lowered nor raised a woman’s chances of preeclampsia. Women with multiple pregnancies as well as women with chronic health conditions were excluded from the study.

About half the women were given 1000 milligrams of vitamin C and 400 international units of vitamin E each day, the other half were given a placebo. The vitamin therapy started during the second trimester of pregnancy and continued until the baby was born.

Placebo = A product with no active ingredient. A dummy drug. A placebo is used in trials to compare its effect with the effect of the target drug, or in this case, the vitamins.

5% of the vitamin therapy group developed preeclampsia, compared to 6% of the placebo group. This difference is considered as ?not statistically significant’. Here are some other findings from this study:

Death rates or serious outcomes for the babies

Vitamin group – 9.5%
Placebo group – 12.1

Low birth weight risk (under 10th percentile)

Vitamin group – 8.7%
Placebo group – 9.9%

Some health experts would like to see a similar trial carried out on pregnant women considered at risk of developing preeclampsia. As the women who were selected for this trial had the lowest preeclampsia risk anyway, perhaps this was the factor that showed no significant difference.

What is Preeclampsia?

Preeclampsia is a hypertensive disorder of pregnancy, a disorder due to rising blood pressure.

Usually, preeclampsia occurs after the 20th week of pregnancy. It can occur earlier, but rarely so. It can affect the unborn baby as well as the mother. Between 5-8% of pregnancies develop preeclampsia.

It is characterised by the presence of protein in the urine and high blood pressure. The mother will probably experience swelling, sudden weight gain, headaches and often changes in vision. It is a rapidly advancing disease. In some cases it advances so rapidly that a woman may notice hardly any symptoms during its development.

Preeclampsia causes your blood pressure to rise. This may make the mother more at risk from:

— impaired kidney function
— impaired liver function
— blood clotting problems
— pulmonary edema (fluid in the lungs)
— maternal and infant death (when preeclampsia is severe)

Preeclampsia can affect the blood flow to the placenta. This affects the baby’s development. The baby is at higher risk of having a lower birthweight, or being born prematurely.

In countries with good prenatal care, it is rare for a mother to die from preeclampsia. However, preeclampsia causes a large number of maternal and infant deaths in many parts of the world.

Click here for more information at The Preeclampsia Foundation

Written by: Christian Nordqvist
Editor: Medical News Today