CVD Risk in Women Predicted by Reproductive Factors

HealthDay News — Reproductive factors, including early menarche and menopause, are associated with increased cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk, according to a study published online in Heart.

Sanne A.E. Peters, PhD, and Mark Woodward, PhD, from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. examined the correlation between reproductive factors and incident CVD in the UK Biobank, which recruited over 500,000 participants aged 40 to 69 years. During 7 years of follow-up, there were 9054 incident CVD cases, 5782 coronary heart disease cases, and 3489 stroke cases among 267,440 women and 215,088 men with no CVD history at baseline.

The researchers found that for CVD, the adjusted hazard ratios were 1.10 for early menarche (before age 12 years), 0.97 for each year increase in age at first birth, 1.04 for each miscarriage, 1.14 for each stillbirth, and 1.33 for early menopause (before age 47 years).

For CVD, adjusted hazard ratios of 1.16 and 2.30 were seen for hysterectomy without oophorectomy or with previous oophorectomy, respectively. In both women and men, each additional child was associated with a hazard ratio for CVD of 1.03.

“Early menarche, early menopause, earlier age at first birth, and a history of miscarriage, stillbirth, or hysterectomy were each independently associated with a higher risk of CVD in later life,” the authors write. “The relationship between the number of children and incident CVD was similar for men and women.”

Reference

Peters SAE, Woodward M. Women’s reproductive factors and incident cardiovascular disease in the UK Biobank published online January 15, 2018]. Heart. doi:10.1136/heartjnl-2017-312289