Mother’s blood pressure can predict unborn baby’s gender, study reveals

A new study has discovered that the gender of a baby can be predicted through a mother’s blood pressure.

The research, which was led by Ravi Retnakaran, a doctor and endocrinologist at Mount Sinai hospital, Canada, found that women with lower BP before pregnancy are more likely to give birth to a girl while higher blood pressure was an indication that a boy was more likely to be conceived.

This “suggests that a woman’s blood pressure before pregnancy is a previously unrecognised factor that is associated with her likelihood of delivering a boy or a girl”, said Retnakaran.

“This novel insight may hold implications for both reproductive planning and our understanding of the fundamental mechanisms underlying the sex ratio in humans.”

Researchers created a group consisting of young women who were planning to have a pregnancy in the near future and used the model to evaluate the relationship between maternal pre-pregnancy health and the sex of the baby.

Participants were assessed medically at recruitment and were monitored from when they got pregnant until delivery through their clinical care.

The research, which was published in the American Journal of Hypertension, began in February 2009 when 3,375 women were recruited in Liuyang, China.

After the recent conclusion of the study, it was discovered that higher maternal blood pressure before pregnancy was an independent predictor of subsequently delivering a boy.