Women who gave birth to a preterm infant are found to be at higher risk of cardiovascular disease after many decades. This was revealed by a study published in the current issue of journal Epidemiology.
A research team from the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania examined data on 446 women with a mean age of 80 years, who took part in an aging and health study. The following findings were derived:
- 6 percent of them had given birth to a preterm infant an average of some 57 years earlier,
- 9 percent of them had had a term infant weighing less than 2,500 gms,
- 4 percent of them had had an infant that was both preterm and of low birth weight.
After adjusting factors such as use of heart-protecting statin drugs and age, the researchers found that women who had had a preterm infant were more than twice likely to have cardiovascular disease than those women who had not. For women who delivered infants that were both preterm and of low birth weight, the chance of having cardiovascular disease was greater than threefold.
The researchers admitted that more work is still needed to understand the mechanisms that may create such link. But with such possibility in hand, women with preterm infants were advised to seek early screening and lifestyle changes so as to improve their cardiovascular health.
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