Novel risk factors for cardiovascular disease during pregnancy in whole populations of the UK

Novel risk factors for cardiovascular disease may stem from natural and anthropogenically driven changes, such as new pathogens and shifting distributions of temperature anomalies.

Exposure to these novel risk factors during pregnancy may severely affect the risk of cardiovascular-related maternal outcomes and the lifetime of cardiovascular risk for women and their offspring.Leveraging on the unique opportunity provided by population-based and environmental data from the UK, this project aims to unravel 1) what are the effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection and 2) non-optimal and extreme temperatures on the risk of cardiovascular-related maternal health outcomes for women and their offspring, and 3) what is the impact of plausible future pandemics and temperature extremes.

This will be achieved by quantifying the excess risk of cardiovascular disease in women and their offspring in relation to exposure to SARS-CoV-2 infection, non-optimal and extreme temperatures, and their compound effect.

Finally, integrating these estimates in possible pandemic-climate scenarios the excess of cardiovascular disease will be quantified.This effort is timely 1) to reduce the impact of novel risk factors for cardiovascular disease (e.g. the number of cardiovascular events, costs for the healthcare system, and burden on maternal care) increasing clinicians’ and stakeholders’ awareness; 2) to support better-informed prevention programs for women and offspring at higher risk; and 3) to rapidly and systematically exploit the impressive amount of data collected during the COVID-19 pandemic.