Pregnancy magnifies heart risk, but age alone does not explain why

A large U.S. cohort-crossover study found that pregnancy and the postpartum period were linked to about a seven-fold higher relative risk of major adverse cardiovascular events compared with patients’ nonpregnant baseline risk. This relative risk increase did not vary by maternal age, suggesting pregnancy broadly amplifies existing cardiovascular risk rather than making older age itself the driver of pregnancy-specific cardiovascular complications.