Friday, June 24, 2011

Smoking During Pregnancy May Predispose Kids to Heart Trouble

(HealthDay News) -- Children born to mothers who smoked during pregnancy have lower levels of "good" HDL cholesterol, which may increase their risk of heart attack and stroke later in life, a new study suggests.

Australian researchers looked at 405 healthy 8-year-old children and found that those whose mothers smoked during pregnancy had HDL levels of about 1.3 millimoles per liter (mmol/L), compared to a normal level of 1.5 mmol/L in children whose mothers didn't smoke.

It's not known how smoking during pregnancy lowers HDL levels in children.

The study was published June 21 online in the European Heart Journal.

"Our results suggest that maternal smoking 'imprints' an unhealthy set of characteristics on children while they are developing in the womb, which may well predispose them to later heart attack and stroke. This imprinting seems to last for at least eight years and probably a lot longer," study leader David Celermajer, a professor of cardiology at the University of Sydney, said in a journal news release. Read more...

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