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 For the study, researchers examined data on more than 500,000
middle-aged adults who didn’t have a history of heart disease,
including more than 267,000 women. Researchers followed half of the
participants for at least seven years, and during that time about
9,000 men and women developed heart disease or experienced a heart
attack or stroke.
Women typically started menstruating when they were 13 years old.
When they got their first period before age 12, women were 10
percent more likely to develop cardiovascular disease than when they
started menstruating at age 13 or older, the study found.
Obesity might explain some of this connection, said study co-author
Sanne Peters of the George Institute for Global Health at the
University of Oxford in the UK. Previous studies have linked early
puberty to obesity in both children and adults, Peters said by
email.
“However, there is no straightforward link,” Peters said. “Our
findings show that the risk of developing cardiovascular disease
increases for both women of healthy weight and women who are
overweight or obese, which suggests we need more research to
understand the association between an early first menstrual cycle
and a greater risk of heart disease and stroke later in life.”
Other reproductive health factors also appeared to influence the
risk of heart disease in women, researchers report in the journal
Heart.
Women who went through menopause early, before age 47, were 33
percent more likely to develop cardiovascular disease and 42 percent
more likely to have a stroke than women who went through menopause
later, the study found.
A history of miscarriages was also linked to a higher risk of
cardiovascular disease, with each miscarriage tied to a 6 percent
increase in the odds of heart problems.
When women had a stillbirth, they were 22 percent more likely to
develop cardiovascular disease and 44 percent more apt to have a
stroke than women who didn’t go through this.
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In addition, those who had a hysterectomy, a surgery to remove the
uterus, were 12 percent more likely to get cardiovascular disease,
and the increased risk was even higher for women who had their
ovaries removed in addition to the uterus.
The study wasn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove whether
or how puberty timing might directly impact the odds of
cardiovascular disease, a heart attack or stroke decades later.
Even so, the results add to the evidence linking earlier maturation
with obesity, high blood pressure and other risk factors for
cardiovascular disease, said Jane Mendle, a human development
researcher at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who wasn’t
involved in the study.
“Early puberty is correlated with many risks and experiences that
are independently important for cardiovascular health - such as
obesity, smoking, socioeconomic status, and higher life stress,”
Mendle said by email. “Likely, it’s a combination of these factors
that explain why earlier development is related to heart health.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2ENG9Ns Heart, online January 15, 2018.
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