A simple Apple watch or fitness tracker could potentially fill a crucial gap in health care by helping women track their pregnancies, and isn’t it funny that many of us might already own one?
More than two million women of childbearing age in the United States live in “maternal care deserts,” or areas with limited access to obstetric care.
According to a press release, the new study, published in Lancet eBioMedicine, couldn’t have come at a more opportune time.
Recent data shows that 24% of women in the U.S. own a smartwatch, and a 2020 survey found women were more likely to own a fitness tracker than men. That’s 41.2 million people.
Pregnancy complications such as miscarriage and preterm birth put mothers and children at risk, making solutions necessary to find.
And it turns out that the one that might make the most significant impact already exists on many women’s wrists, so Apple watches and fitness trackers could revolutionize preventative care.
“Wearable devices offer a unique opportunity to develop innovative solutions that address the high number of adverse pregnancy outcomes in the U.S.”
But how?
Monitoring pregnancy via heart rate
Researchers from Scripps Research collected data from 5,600 participants, including 108 women who provided more detailed health information three months before their pregnancy through six months after delivery. They even monitored their sleep and activities.
The data didn’t lie — scientists identified physiological patterns that aligned with the fluctuation of key pregnancy hormones such as estrogen, progesterone, and human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG). Critical to healthy pregnancy outcomes, these hormones provide insights into how a pregnancy progresses.
“The heart rate data was particularly compelling,” per the press release.
Early during the pregnancy, “the heart rate dropped around weeks five to nine and then steadily increased until eight to nine weeks before delivery, reaching peaks up to 9.4 beats per minute above pre-pregnancy levels. After birth, the heart rate dropped below baseline levels before stabilizing around six months postpartum.”
To validate all this, “the Scripps team compared the patterns the wearable sensor detected with published hormone-level data from previous pregnancy studies, creating detailed models that predicted heart rate changes based on expected hormonal fluctuations throughout pregnancy,” the press release continued.
The research is still in its beginning stages. However, it demonstrates that good news might be on the horizon — that wearables might assist in prenatal care, especially if women are living in these “maternal care deserts.”
Gotta track those hormones ladies, as you’re power walking
“Hormones play a key role in pregnancy outcomes,” explained co-senior author Tolúwalàṣẹ Àjàyí.
“Discovering the association between heart rate and hormone changes could unlock new ways to predict the beginning of pregnancy or identify signs of adverse outcomes such as gestational diabetes or preeclampsia.”
In a small number of cases, pregnancies that ended in miscarriage or stillbirth —and in the U.S., that’s about 1 in 4 pregnancies, according to Yale- heart rate patterns differed from healthy pregnancies. But, as it goes in science, researchers have to conduct tests on larger groups of women.
All the same, some of us have access to technology that might find a new role to play in our lives. By transforming consumer devices into medical monitoring tools, gaps could be bridged in health care by providing continuous oversight. Early detection is typically preferred.
Now, researchers will expand their analysis to consider demographics, socioeconomics, and geography. “Our goal is to determine whether this approach could eventually contribute to more personalized pregnancy care,” stated senior author Giulia Milan in a press release.
The press release concludes that future studies must investigate whether these physiological changes captured by wearables could support clinical decision-making and patient care — meaning, would they help eliminate a step? Can they?
It looks promising for the moment, but the extent to which this data can be reliable is yet to be determined.