Study: Fish Lowers Risk of Hypertensive Disorders for Pregnant Women

16 minutes ago

2 min read

A study by T. Inouye et al titled “Association of the maternal fish and PUFA intake with the risk of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy: a nationwide birth cohort—The Japan Environment and Children’s Study (JECS)” published on 8 September 2026 shows that expectant mothers can lower the risk of hypertensive disorders by eating fish.

The paper is about 14 pages long, with the main text at about 9 pages. The remaining are acknowledgements and references.

In total, 86,009 maternal records were obtained between January 2011 and March 2014.

Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP) is when the systolic blood pressure is ≥140 mmHg or diastolic blood pressure is ≥90 mmHg after 20 weeks of gestation in women without a prior history of hypertension.

Early-onset HDP (Eo-HDP) is defined as onset before 32 weeks of gestation and late-onset HDP (Lo-HDP) is defined as onset at or after 32 weeks.

The mean fish intake was 8.6 g/day in the lowest quintile (Q1) and 52.1 g/day in the highest quintile (Q5). The corresponding mean intake of n-3 PUFAs was 1.1 g/day and 4.7 g/day, respectively.

Two major observations were made:

Notably, pre-pregnancy fish intake was significantly associated with a lower risk of Eo-HDP among nulliparous women, suggesting that the anti-inflammatory and antithrombotic effects of n-3 PUFAs, similar to those of LDA, may be involved in the underlying mechanisms. Conversely, fish intake during pregnancy was linked to a reduced risk of Lo-HDP.

For the pre-pregnancy intake group, the adjusted ORs for Eo-HDP is 0.69 and 0.66 in Q4 and Q5. For those eating fish during pregnancy, the adjusted ORs for Lo-HDP is approximately 0.86 for Q3 to Q5.

The strength of this analysis is the large sample size, “the largest study to date examining the association between dietary intake of fish and n-3 PUFAs and the risk of HDP”. One of the weaknesses is that the study does not distinguish between the different species of fish, except that they are marine (saltwater) fish.