Association of maternal hypertensive disorders in pregnancy with infant neurodevelopment

Inconsistent findings have been reported regarding the associations between hypertensive disorders in pregnancy (HDP) and infant neurodevelopment. Leveraging data from the Jiangsu Birth Cohort, in the present study, we re-visited such associations in one-year-old infants from 2576 singleton pregnancies and 261 twin pregnancies. We first assessed infant neurodevelopment by the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development Screening Test (the Third Edition), and then estimated its association with maternal HDP using general linear regression models and Poisson regression models. In singleton pregnancies, compared with mothers unexposed to HDP, infants born to mothers with chronic hypertension exhibited a lower score (β, −0.67; 95% confidence interval CI, −1.19–−0.15) and a higher risk of "non-optimal" gross motor development (risk ratio RR, 2.21; 95% CI, 1.02–4.79); in twin pregnancies, infants born to mothers with HDP exhibited lower scores in cognition (β, −0.49; 95% CI, −0.96–−0.01), receptive communication (β, −0.55; 95% CI, −1.03–−0.06), and gross motor (β, −0.44; 95% CI, −0.86–−0.03), and at a higher risk of "non-optimal" gross motor development (RR, 2.12; 95% CI, 1.16–3.88). These findings indicate that infants born to mothers with HDP may have inferior neurodevelopment outcomes at the age of one year.