Journal of the American Heart Association: Cardiovascular and Cerebrovascular Disease (Nov 2017)

Breastfeeding and the Risk of Maternal Cardiovascular Disease: A Prospective Study of 300 000 Chinese Women

  • Sanne A. E. Peters,
  • Ling Yang,
  • Yu Guo,
  • Yiping Chen,
  • Zheng Bian,
  • Jianwei Du,
  • Jie Yang,
  • Shanpeng Li,
  • Liming Li,
  • Mark Woodward,
  • Zhengming Chen,
  • Junshi Chen,
  • Rory Collins,
  • Richard Peto,
  • Derrick Bennett,
  • Yumei Chang,
  • Robert Clarke,
  • Huaidong Du,
  • Xuejuan Fan,
  • Simon Gilbert,
  • Alex Hacker,
  • Michael Holmes,
  • Andri Iona,
  • Christiana Kartsonaki,
  • Rene Kerosi,
  • Ling Kong,
  • Om Kurmi,
  • Garry Lancaster,
  • Sarah Lewington,
  • John McDonnell,
  • Iona Millwood,
  • Qunhua Nie,
  • Jayakrishnan Radhakrishnan,
  • Sajjad Rafiq,
  • Paul Ryder,
  • Sam Sansome,
  • Dan Schmidt,
  • Paul Sherliker,
  • Rajani Sohoni,
  • Iain Turnbull,
  • Robin Walters,
  • Jenny Wang,
  • Lin Wang,
  • Xiaoming Yang,
  • Ge Chen,
  • Bingyang Han,
  • Can Hou,
  • Jun Lv,
  • Pei Pei,
  • Shuzhen Qu,
  • Yunlong Tan,
  • Canqing Yu,
  • Huiyan Zhou,
  • Zengchang Pang,
  • Ruqin Gao,
  • Shaojie Wang,
  • Yongmei Liu,
  • Ranran Du,
  • Yajing Zang,
  • Liang Cheng,
  • Xiaocao Tian,
  • Hua Zhang,
  • Silu Lv,
  • Junzheng Wang,
  • Wei Hou,
  • Jiyuan Yin,
  • Ge Jiang,
  • Shumei Liu,
  • Zhigang Pang,
  • Xue Zhou,
  • Liqiu Yang,
  • Hui He,
  • Bo Yu,
  • Yanjie Li,
  • Huaiyi Mu,
  • Qinai Xu,
  • Meiling Dou,
  • Jiaojiao Ren,
  • Shanqing Wang,
  • Ximin Hu,
  • Hongmei Wang,
  • Jinyan Chen,
  • Yan Fu,
  • Zhenwang Fu,
  • Xiaohuan Wang,
  • Hua Dong,
  • Min Weng,
  • Xiangyang Zheng,
  • Yijun Li,
  • Huimei Li,
  • Chenglong Li,
  • Ming Wu,
  • Jinyi Zhou,
  • Ran Tao,
  • Jie Shen,
  • Yihe Hu,
  • Yan Lu,
  • Yan Gao,
  • Liangcai Ma,
  • Renxian Zhou,
  • Aiyu Tang,
  • Shuo Zhang,
  • Jianrong Jin,
  • Zhenzhu Tang,
  • Naying Chen,
  • Ying Huang,
  • Mingqiang Li,
  • Jinhuai Meng,
  • Rong Pan,
  • Qilian Jiang,
  • Jingxin Qing,
  • Weiyuan Zhang,
  • Yun Liu,
  • Liuping Wei,
  • Liyuan Zhou,
  • Ningyu Chen,
  • Jun Yang,
  • Hairong Guan,
  • Xianping Wu,
  • Ningmei Zhang,
  • Xiaofang Chen,
  • Xuefeng Tang,
  • Guojin Luo,
  • Jianguo Li,
  • Xiaofang Chen,
  • Jian Wang,
  • Jiaqiu Liu,
  • Qiang Sun,
  • Pengfei Ge,
  • Xiaolan Ren,
  • Caixia Dong,
  • Hui Zhang,
  • Enke Mao,
  • Xiaoping Wang,
  • Tao Wang,
  • Guohua Liu,
  • Baoyu Zhu,
  • Gang Zhou,
  • Shixian Feng,
  • Liang Chang,
  • Lei Fan,
  • Yulian Gao,
  • Tianyou He,
  • Li Jiang,
  • Huarong Sun,
  • Pan He,
  • Chen Hu,
  • Qiannan Lv,
  • Xukui Zhang,
  • Min Yu,
  • Ruying Hu,
  • Le Fang,
  • Hao Wang,
  • Yijian Qian,
  • Chunmei Wang,
  • Kaixue Xie,
  • Lingli Chen,
  • Yaxing Pan,
  • Dongxia Pan,
  • Yuelong Huang,
  • Biyun Chen,
  • Donghui Jin,
  • Huilin Liu,
  • Zhongxi Fu,
  • Qiaohua Xu,
  • Xin Xu,
  • Youping g,
  • Weifang Jia,
  • Xianzhi Li,
  • Libo Zhang,
  • Zhe Qiu

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1161/JAHA.117.006081
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 6, no. 6

Abstract

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BackgroundBreastfeeding confers substantial benefits to child health and has also been associated with lower risk of maternal cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) in later life. However, the evidence on the effects of CVD is still inconsistent, especially in East Asians, in whom the frequency and duration of breastfeeding significantly differ from those in the West. Methods and ResultsIn 2004–2008, the nationwide China Kadoorie Biobank recruited 0.5 million individuals aged 30 to 79 years from 10 diverse regions across China. During 8 years of follow‐up, 16 671 incident cases of coronary heart disease and 23 983 cases of stroke were recorded among 289 573 women without prior CVD at baseline. Cox regression yielded adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% CIs for incident CVD by breastfeeding. Overall, ≈99% of women had given birth, among whom 97% reported a history of breastfeeding, with a median duration of 12 months per child. Compared with parous women who had never breastfed, ever breastfeeding was associated with a significantly lower risk of CVD, with adjusted HRs of 0.91 (95% CI, 0.84–0.99) for coronary heart disease and 0.92 (95% CI, 0.85–0.99) for stroke. Women who had breastfed for ≥24 months had an 18% (HR, 0.82; 0.77–0.87) lower risk of coronary heart disease and a 17% (HR, 0.83; 0.79–0.87) lower risk of stroke compared with women who had never breastfed. Among women who ever breastfed, each additional 6 months of breastfeeding per child was associated with an adjusted HR of 0.96 (95% CI, 0.94–0.98) for coronary heart disease and 0.97 (95% CI, 0.96–0.98) for stroke. ConclusionsAmong Chinese women, a history of breastfeeding was associated with an ≈10% lower risk of CVD in later life and the magnitude of the inverse association was stronger among those with a longer duration of breastfeeding.

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