Ethnicity, Obesity and Emotional Factors Associated With Gestational Hypertension

Identifying factors that can be related to the occurrence of gestational arterial hypertension. The sample was composed by 105 pregnant women in their third trimester of gestation, during the period between September 2013 and August 2014. General assessment questionnaires together with a questionnaire to evaluate anxiety (STAI-A-STATE) were applied; arterial blood pressure values were collected. To classify anxiety, a mean of the final result of all the questionnaires gotten was calculated. Pregnant women who showed scores higher than the mean were considered anxious. All data were analyzed by a logistic regression. The significance level adopted was 0.05. A data analysis allowed us to verify that 92.38% of the pregnant women had an anxious personality STAI-A-STATE and 12.38% of them had a momentary hypertension. The momentary hypertension showed a correlation between the hypertension and the state anxiety score (p = 0.049). The hypertension showed an association with the presence of depression (OR 8.69), obesity (OR 6.45), anxiety (OR 7.77), nausea (OR 12.79) and non-white race (OR 8.18). According to the study realized, the factors non-white race, depression, nausea, obesity and anxiety can be considered risk factors for the occurrence of gestational arterial hypertension. Based on these findings, a high quality prenatal assistance is considered of prime importance.