March 2, 2010
A woman's risk of heart disease and stroke may have to do with how many kids she has.
A new study says women who have given birth at least five times are at the highest risk.
Those with two had the lowest.
Researchers looked at 23 years worth of data on one-point-three million Swedish women.
Compared with women who gave birth twice, the lowest risk group, women with zero, one, or three births had about 10- percent greater risk of future heart disease.
For women with four births, it was 30 percent while five or more births rose to nearly 60 percent.
The study says pregnancy leads to marked changes in how blood flows in and through blood vessels.
That, it says, may alter the risk for heart disease and stroke.
The findings appear in The American Heart Journal.