Among 91 Austrian women followed after preeclampsia (n=66) or gestational hypertension (n=25), 31% met criteria for arterial hypertension 12 months postpartum (29% PE, 36% GH). Eighteen percent had prediabetes and 3% diabetes; 52% had LDL above 100 mg/dL, 32% low HDL, and 24% obesity. Eight percent were diagnosed with chronic kidney disease, and low-grade albuminuria (uACR 10-30 mg/g) appeared in 21% of preeclampsia versus 8% of gestational hypertension cases.
These numbers show that cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic risk is already visible one year after delivery, not decades later. That fits large registry data linking hypertensive pregnancy to later heart disease, stroke and kidney failure, and it supports guideline calls to treat these pregnancies as an early cardiovascular risk flag. The practical message for women: blood pressure, lipids, glucose and urine albumin deserve checking in the first year, and again at regular intervals afterward, with lifestyle measures and clinician follow-up where values are abnormal. The study's limits are real. It is small, single-center, lacks a normotensive-pregnancy comparison group, and has no hard clinical outcomes, so it cannot show how much excess risk hypertensive pregnancy adds beyond ordinary postpartum recovery. Single-visit blood pressure readings may also overstate persistent hypertension. Editorially, this is confirmatory rather than paradigm-shifting, but its value lies in quantifying early kidney and metabolic findings that postpartum care routinely misses.