Grant: Operating Grant

High blood pressure in mothers during pregnancy may negatively affect newborn health, including prematurity and even death. When a mother presents with high blood pressure, doctors often intervene with early delivery to prevent death or serious illness of her newborn. However, the relationships between high blood pressure, prematurity and infant death are complex, and it is often difficult to determine if the death of a newborn is actually caused by the mother's high blood pressure, or by the consequences of prematurity. This information would help clinicians to better determine the extent to which high blood pressure and preterm birth contribute to poor health in newborns, in order to better inform doctors of the risks involved with these problems during pregnancy. Also problematic is that most forms of high blood pressure in pregnancy have not been monitored provincially or nationally so it is not known how common this problem is in Canada, or if it is a growing problem as it is in other countries (such as in the United States). Using Quebec hospitalization records, an excellent but underutilized source of data on pregnancies, this study will examine the relationships between blood pressure, prematurity and newborn health, including statistics on trends over time in vulnerable populations. Furthermore, we will use sophisticated statistical techniques than have recently been developed in the epidemiologic literature to ensure that high quality results are obtained. The end result will be a better understanding of the contribution of high blood pressure and prematurity to newborn survival, and if there have been concerning changes over time.