Relation of Pregnancy Loss to Risk of Cardiovascular Disease Among Parous Postmenopausal Women (From the Women’s Health Initiative)

• Published in: The American journal of cardiology 2019-02, Vol.123 (10), p.1620-1625
• Main Authors: Hall, Philip S., Nah, Gregory, Vittinghoff, Eric, Parker, Donna R., Manson, JoAnn E., Howard, Barbara V., Sarto, Gloria E., Gass, Margery L., Sealy-Jefferson, Shawnita M., Salmoirago-Blotcher, Elena, Stefanick, Marcia L., Shadyab, Aladdin H., Van Horn, Linda V., Park, Ki, Parikh, Nisha I.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0002-9149; 1879-1913
• DOI: 10.1016/j.amjcard.2019.02.012

Women with history of pregnancy loss (PL) have higher burden of cardiovascular disease (CVD) later in life, yet it is unclear whether this is attributable to an association with established CVD risk factors (RFs). We examined whether PL is associated with CVD RFs and biomarkers among parous postmenopausal women in the Women’s Health Initiative, and whether the association between PL and CVD RFs accounted for the association between PL and incident CVD. Linear and logistic regressions were used to estimate associations between baseline history of PL and CVD RFs. Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to estimate the associations between baseline history of PL and incident CVD after adjustment for baseline RFs. Of 79,121 women, 27,272 (35%) had experienced PL. History of PL was associated with higher BMI (p