New Delhi, Feb 3
Women who give birth to twin babies are two times more at risk of facing a heart problem than those with singleton births, according to a study on Monday.

The research, published in the European Heart Journal, showed that the mother of twins is at higher risk of hospitalisation due to heart disease a year after birth.

Notably, the risk is even higher in those who had a high blood pressure condition during pregnancy, also known as preeclampsia.

The study, led by researchers from Rutgers University in the US, comes as “the rate of twin pregnancies worldwide has risen in recent decades, driven by fertility treatments and older maternal ages”.

“The maternal heart works harder for twin pregnancies than for singleton pregnancies, and it takes weeks for the maternal heart to return to its pre-pregnancy state,” said lead author Dr. Ruby Lin, a maternal-foetal medicine fellow at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.

“People with twin pregnancies should be aware of the short-term increase in cardiovascular disease complications in the first year after birth, even if they had a pregnancy that was not complicated by high blood pressure conditions, such as pre-eclampsia,” she added.

The study analysed data on 36 million hospital deliveries in the US from 2010 to 2020.

The results showed a higher proportion of readmissions for cardiovascular disease within a year of giving birth in women with twins (1,105.4 per 100,000 deliveries) than those with singleton pregnancies (734.1 per 100,000 deliveries).

Compared to singleton pregnancies with normal blood pressure, people with twins with normal blood pressure were around twice as likely to be hospitalised with cardiovascular disease.

For those with twins with high blood pressure during pregnancy, the risk was more than eight times higher. However, one year after birth, deaths from any cause, including heart disease, were higher among patients with singleton pregnancies who had high blood pressure conditions compared to patients with twins with high blood pressure conditions, the study showed.

This suggests that the risk to mothers of twins decreases in the longer term, while the mothers of singletons may have other pre-existing cardiovascular risk factors.

Lin said that patients undergoing fertility treatments, especially those with advanced age, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, or heart disease, should be advised that twin pregnancies may increase complications related to heart disease in the short term.

She also urged healthcare providers to continue follow-up for up to a year after birth for high-risk pregnancies.

Women with twins 2x more at higher risk of heart disease: Study