London - Women who use donor eggs to have babies through IVF could be at much greater risk of high blood pressure.
Researchers warn they have nearly four times higher risk of hypertension and are even more likely to develop pre-eclampsia – a condition which is potentially fatal for both the mother and baby.
A team from the Institut Mutualiste Montsouris in Paris found that nearly one in five women (18 percent) using donated eggs develop hypertension, compared with one in 20 women (five percent) using their own.
Just over 11 percent of women who used a donor suffered pre-eclampsia, compared to just 2.8 percent of women who did not.
The study looked at 580 pregnancies, including 217 resulting from egg donation.
Leader of the research Dr Helene Letur said: “We would have to conclude that egg donation itself is a risk factor for pregnancy-induced hypertension and pre-eclampsia,’ she said. ‘This has growing importance because of the increasing number of egg donations.”
The extent of donor egg use in the UK is not known, but it accounts for 12 percent of all fertility treatments in the US, and four percent in some European countries.
The findings were reported to the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Munich. - Daily Mail