Objective Population-based data regarding pregnancy outcomes for patients who experienced stroke during pregnancy is sparse and mainly from Western populations. The authors investigate the association between strokes and pregnancy outcomes in Chinese women through a nationwide case-controlled study.

Methods A total of 161 women having live singleton births between 2001 and 2003 who had strokes during pregnancy were included in the study group. The authors randomly selected 1288 mothers matched in age and year of delivery for the comparison group. Conditional logistic regressions were performed to examine the odds of low birth weight (LBW), preterm and small-for-gestational-age (SGA) babies between these two groups, after adjusting for the characteristics of mother and infant and comorbid medical disorders.

Results The authors found that the mothers with stroke during pregnancy were more likely to have lower monthly family incomes (p=0.031) and to have gestational hypertension (p=0.004), anaemia (p<0.001) and pre-eclampsia/eclampsia (p=0.039) than the comparison group. Results showed no significant differences in the prevalence of preterm births (5.6% vs 7.1%, p=0.466), LBW (5.6% vs 7.1%, p=0.486) and SGA infants (14.3% vs 16.9%, p=0.396) between women who had strokes during pregnancy and mothers in the comparison group. After adjusting for other potential confounders, conditional logistic regression analyses showed no significant differences in the odds of having preterm, LBW babies and SGA infants between two groups.

Conclusions The authors found that there is no statistically significant difference in the pregnancy outcomes between Chinese women who had strokes during pregnancy and those who did not.