TY - JOUR
T1 - A prospective study of age at menarche, parity, age at first birth, and coronary heart disease in women
AU - Colditz, Graham A.
AU - Willett, Walter C.
AU - Stampfer, Meir J.
AU - Rosner, Bernard
AU - Speizer, Frank E.
AU - Hennekens, Charles H.
N1 - Funding Information:
Received for publication July 22, 1986, and in final 02115. form February 6, 1987. This work was supported by Research Grants HL 1The Channing Laboratory, Department of Medi-24074, HL 34594, CA 40935, and CA 40356-03 from cine, Harvard Medical School, and Brigham and the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Willett was the Women's Hospital, Boston, MA. recipient of a Research Career Development Award 1 Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of (HL 01018). Public Health, Boston, MA. The authors thank David DyBert, Meryl Dannen-3 Department of Preventive Medicine and Clinical berg, Barbara Egan, Susan Newman, Marty Van Den-Epidemiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA. burgh, Marion McPhee, and Karen Corsano for their Reprint requests to Dr. Graham A. Colditz, Chan-unfailing help, ning Laboratory, 180 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA
PY - 1987/11
Y1 - 1987/11
N2 - Reproductive events in women are associated with alterations in blood lipids and blood pressure and may therefore influence determinants of coronary heart disease. To investigate the risk of coronary heart disease in relation to age at menarche, parity, and age at first birth, the authors evaluated prospectively the experience of 119,963 US women aged 30-55 years who were free from coronary heart disease in 1976 and were followed through 1982. During 700,809 person- years of observatIon, 308 incident cases of nonfatal myocardlal infarction or fatal coronary heart disease occurred. Younger age at menarche was weakly associated with coronary heart disease (age-adjusted rate ratio of 1.3 for menarche before age 11 years compared with menarche at age 13 years; x, Mantel extension test for trend = -1.1, p = 0.2). Nulliparous women experienced only a slightly higher rate of coronary heart disease than parous women (rate ratio = 1.2, 95 per cent confidence interval 0.8-1.8). Among parous women, there was no alteration in risk with increasing number of births. Likewise, there was no significant association between age at first birth and coronary heart disease (x, Mantel extension test for trend = -0.4, p = 0.4). Established risk factors for coronary heart disease nevertheless showed expected relations. These findings show no important association between reproductive experiences and risk of coronary heart disease.
AB - Reproductive events in women are associated with alterations in blood lipids and blood pressure and may therefore influence determinants of coronary heart disease. To investigate the risk of coronary heart disease in relation to age at menarche, parity, and age at first birth, the authors evaluated prospectively the experience of 119,963 US women aged 30-55 years who were free from coronary heart disease in 1976 and were followed through 1982. During 700,809 person- years of observatIon, 308 incident cases of nonfatal myocardlal infarction or fatal coronary heart disease occurred. Younger age at menarche was weakly associated with coronary heart disease (age-adjusted rate ratio of 1.3 for menarche before age 11 years compared with menarche at age 13 years; x, Mantel extension test for trend = -1.1, p = 0.2). Nulliparous women experienced only a slightly higher rate of coronary heart disease than parous women (rate ratio = 1.2, 95 per cent confidence interval 0.8-1.8). Among parous women, there was no alteration in risk with increasing number of births. Likewise, there was no significant association between age at first birth and coronary heart disease (x, Mantel extension test for trend = -0.4, p = 0.4). Established risk factors for coronary heart disease nevertheless showed expected relations. These findings show no important association between reproductive experiences and risk of coronary heart disease.
KW - Coronary disease
KW - Reproduction
KW - Women
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0023266687&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1093/oxfordjournals.aje.a114723
DO - 10.1093/oxfordjournals.aje.a114723
M3 - Article
C2 - 3661534
AN - SCOPUS:0023266687
SN - 0002-9262
VL - 126
SP - 861
EP - 870
JO - American journal of epidemiology
JF - American journal of epidemiology
IS - 5
ER -