A new study published today suggests that a Mediterranean-style diet lowers the risk of developing preeclampsia, a condition during pregnancy characterized by severe high blood pressure and liver or kidney damage that may lead to major complications and death for the mother and her unborn child

According to new research published today in the Journal of the American Heart Association, following a Mediterranean-style diet during pregnancy was linked to a lower risk of preeclampsia, with Black women having the greatest reduction in risk.

A Mediterranean diet, which consists mostly of vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, olive oil, whole grains, and fish, has been shown to lower the risk of heart disease in adults in previous research.

Preeclampsia, a condition that causes very high blood pressure and liver or kidney damage during pregnancy, is a leading cause of problems and death in both the mother and her unborn child. Preeclampsia also raises a woman’s risk of heart disease later in life by more than two times, such as high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke, or heart failure. Preeclampsia increases the chance of premature delivery (birth before 37 weeks gestation) or low birth weight newborns, and children born to preeclampsia mothers are more likely to have high blood pressure and heart disease.

According to the study’s authors, black women are at a higher risk of developing preeclampsia, but research on potential treatments for high-risk women is scarce. The researchers looked into the possibility of a Mediterranean-style diet being linked to a high risk of preeclampsia in a large group of racially and culturally varied women.

More than 8,500 women were enrolled in the Boston Birth Cohort between 1998 and 2016, and their data was used in this study. The average age of the participants was 25, and they came from Boston Medical Center, which serves a primarily urban, low-income, and under-represented racial and ethnic population. According to self-reported statistics on a postpartum questionnaire, nearly half of the participants were Black women (47%), about a quarter were Hispanic women (28%), and the rest were white women of “other” race. Researchers developed a Mediterranean-style diet score based on participants’ responses to food frequency interviews and questionnaires conducted within three days of delivery.

The findings revealed:

• 10% of the study participants developed preeclampsia.
• Women who had any form of diabetes before pregnancy and pre-pregnancy obesity were twice as likely to develop preeclampsia compared to women without those conditions.
• The risk of preeclampsia was more than 20% lower among the women who followed a Mediterranean-style diet during pregnancy.
• Black women who had the lowest Mediterranean-style diet scores had the highest risk (78%) for preeclampsia compared to all other non-Black women who more closely adhered to the Mediterranean-style diet.

“We were surprised that women who more frequently ate foods in the Mediterranean-style diet were significantly less likely to develop preeclampsia, with Black women experiencing the greatest reduction in risk,” said the authors. “This is remarkable because there are very few interventions during pregnancy that are found to produce any meaningful benefit, and medical treatments during pregnancy must be approached cautiously to ensure the benefits outweigh the potential risks to the mother and the unborn child.”

They added: “Women should be encouraged to follow a healthy lifestyle, including a nutritious diet and regular exercise, at all stages in life. Eating healthy foods regularly, including vegetables, fruits and legumes, is especially important for women during pregnancy. Their health during pregnancy affects their future cardiovascular health and also impacts their baby’s health.”

The study’s shortcomings stem from the food frequency interviews, which were completed just once after the pregnancy and depended on self-reported information about which foods were consumed and how often they were consumed.

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