Pregnant women, who have high blood pressure, are three times more likely to develop dementia at a later stage than women who have had no problems during pregnancy, researchers say.
One of the main causes of pre-eclampsia is vascular disorder, with inflammation occurring in between 2 and 10 percent of cases, usually 20 weeks after conception.
Besides blood pressure, preeclampsia can cause abnormally high levels of protein in urine, and retention of fluids.
According to the records of more than one million women in Denmark, the researchers found that the greatest risk facing women who had already been infected with preeclampsia was exposure to what is called vascular dementia, which is thought to result from a series of simple strokes or lack of blood reaching the brain .
The incidence of Alzheimer's disease, a different type of dementia, was only slightly higher than for women who did not get preeclampsia.
The research team said in remarks to BMG Medical Research, earlier studies have linked pregnancy poisoning with cognitive impairment, and brain changes within a year of pregnancy.
Women who are exposed to preeclampsia are more likely to have heart disease, strokes, hypertension and diabetes later, they said.
"We have gathered enough evidence that the effects of preeclampsia on women's health are not limited to pregnancy," said lead author Heather Boyd of the StatenSymer Institute in Copenhagen.
To find out the links between pre-eclampsia and dementia, the researchers used data from the National Register of Monitoring for 117,8005 women who had children in Denmark between 1978 and 2015. More than four percent of them were found to have one or more pregnancies during pregnancy.
The researchers then examined women's history for 21 years on average. Even after adjusting for other factors that may affect the chances of dementia, including heart disease and diabetes, researchers found that the risk of vascular dementia at an advanced age (after 65 years) is six and a half times higher among women who have been infected with pregnancy.
Women who develop pre-eclampsia are twice as likely to die early. They are 50 percent more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease and 40 percent more likely to develop dementia.
More than once, the infection is associated with pre-eclampsia more than once by poisoning from a single pregnancy.
