(RxWiki News) Many moms are on the lookout for the flu, chicken pox and scraped knees in their kids. But a new study suggests that some mothers might need to pay closer attention to their own heart health.
A new study found that women who had given birth five or more times had a raised risk for heart disease, including diastolic dysfunction. Eighty-five percent of women who had five or more live births had diastolic dysfunction.
In diastolic dysfunction, the heart has trouble properly filling with and pumping blood. Untreated, the condition can cause congstive heart failure.
Shivani Aggarwal, MBBS, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, and colleagues wanted to explore this issue in Hispanic women. To do so, they used data from the Echocardiographic Study of Latinos. This study included patients from locations across the US.
Dr. Aggarwal and colleagues identified 855 Hispanic women aged 45 and older. Of these women, 4.7 percent had no live births and 12.2 percent had given birth to five or more children.
The study authors found that 51 percent of the women who had no live births had diastolic dysfunction. The same was true for between 61 and 63 percent of women who had two to four live births.
Dr. Aggarwal and team found that women who had five or more live births had a 3.15 times greater risk of having diastolic dysfunction than women who had no live births.
Further research is needed to better understand the relationship between giving birth and heart health in Hispanic women, the study authors noted.
This study was presented Nov. 17 at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2014 in Chicago. Research presented at conferences may not have been peer-reviewed.
The authors disclosed no funding sources or conflicts of interest.
