Hispanic Women With More Children More Likely To Develop Heart Trouble

A new study from Wake Forest School of Medicine has found that the number of children Hispanic women have given birth to may be able to predict whether they are vulnerable to heart problems. Specifically, researcher Shivani Aggarwal and her team uncovered that women with at least five children are more likely to have certain types of heart trouble.

The study -- which looked at nearly 1,000 Hispanic women from Chicago, Miami, New York City and San Diego -- found that 85 percent of the women who had more than give children suffered from a heart condition called ventricular diastolic dysfunction. The correlation between the number of children and the condition was clear: The more children you had, the higher the probability.

"Diastolic dysfunction is a sign of the heart stiffening -- potentially leading to heart failure and chronic cardiac disease," explained one expert, Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum, director of women and heart disease at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, to Health Day.

Heart.org reported the three key findings from the study:

• Among women with five or more live births, 85 percent had left ventricular diastolic dysfunction, leading to an abnormal relaxation phase of the heart.
• Among women with two to four live births, 61 percent to 63 percent had diastolic dysfunction.
• Among women with no births, 51 percent developed diastolic dysfunction.

“Further studies are needed to determine the functional changes that occur and their harmful consequences on diastolic function and whether these changes translate into heart failure,” said Shivani Aggarwal, M.B.B.S., lead author of the study.