Clinical characteristics
A total of 85 women were included in this study (35 from Ottawa and 50
from Kingston). Clinical characteristics of the participants, as a
combined cohort and by each study site, are shown in Table 1 and
2 . The demographic characteristics of the women between the two study
sites were not significantly different, apart from maternal age and
pre-pregnancy BMI. Although the average age of women in Kingston was 2
years younger than women in Ottawa (p=0.015), this difference is not
deemed to be clinically significant. Although women in Ottawa had
significantly higher pre-pregnancy BMIs than women in Kingston
(p=0.024), the gestational weight gain for the index pregnancy was
similar between the two sites (13.2 ± 7.1 vs 14.6 ± 7.1, p=0.393).
As for pregnancy outcomes, women in Kingston had significantly higher
blood pressures at delivery, increased use of anti-hypertensive
medication in pregnancy, delivered at earlier gestational ages compared
to women in Ottawa (34.0 [31.0, 38.0] weeks vs 37.5 [34.4,
39.4], p<0.0001) and had more SGA infants compared with
women in Ottawa. At 6 months postpartum, there were no significant
differences in cardiometabolic parameters between the participants at
the study sites. Of the 85 women included in the analysis, 53 (62.4%)
women screened high-risk for lifetime CVD at 6 months postpartum.