April the cruellest month in battle to keep clear of heart disease

APRIL really is the cruellest month, scientists have found, after discovering that women born in that month are more likely to die of cardiovascular disease.

TS Eliot in The Waste Land claimed the month stirred “memory and desire’, and researchers at Harvard University found that the hearts of spring baby girls may indeed be perturbed.

Those born in April were at a 12 per cent greater risk of death from heart disease, compared with the baseline group of November babies, with speculation that a lack of sunlight could be to blame. Likewise March and July babies had a 9 per cent higher risk, while those born in May and June were 8 per cent more likely.

The increased risk had petered out by November, and by December had even started to decline, with babies born near Christmas having 5 per cent less risk, before the odds started to climb again in the New Year.

During the study, the overall risk of death from cardiovascular disease was one in 14, and the figures suggest that for a child born in April, the chance would roughly rise to one in 12.

Writing in the The British Medical Journal, Eva Schernhammer, professor of epidemiology, said: “Compared with women born in November, we observed higher cardiovascular mortality among those born from March to July, peaking in April, and the lowest among those born in December.

“This study supports that the associations of foetal and early life factors with cardiovascular disease mortality could relate to a small but real seasonal effect of foetal or early life factors in later life. Further investigations are required to confirm current findings and uncover mechanisms of seasonal birth month effect in cardiovascular mortality.”

Scientists said that the dark winter months before the birth may deprive the growing foetus of crucial sunlight, or the effect may be driven by seasonal fluctuations in diet, temperature or air pollution.