Women who delay starting a family 'at greater risk of stroke'

WOMEN who have their children later in life are more likely to have a stroke or heart attack, a major study claims.

Those who gave birth in their forties were more than two-thirds more likely to die of cardiovascular disease than those who became mothers earlier.

The number of older mothers has soared in recent decades as more women concentrate on their career.

Doctors have warned about putting off having a family, pointing out that fertility drops significantly from the late thirties.

The risk of complications during pregnancy also increases with late motherhood and babies born to older women have a higher chance of birth defects.

The latest study, which looked at more than 72,000 women, suggests that having children later also has implications for a woman’s health long after giving birth.

It was not clear why this would be the case, and some of the effects could be explained by other health problems, such as higher blood pressure or cholesterol levels, which increase with age and can be put down to lifestyle. However, the team, from the Univer- sity of Minnesota in the US, found the risk of haemorrhagic stroke – the kind caused by a brain bleed – persisted even when previous conditions were taken into account, which the authors said needed more research.

The scientists tracked 72,221 women for 12 years into their old age. They compared the health of the 5 per cent of the group who had given birth after 40 to those who had children earlier.

The research, presented yesterday at the American Stroke Association meeting in Los Angeles, found those mothers who had given birth after 40 were 70 per cent more likely to die of cardiovascular disease later in life.

They were also twice as likely to have a haemorrhagic stroke and a fifth more likely to have a heart attack. Their risk of an ischaemic stroke, the type caused by a blood clot, was 60 per cent higher, the scientists found. Despite the increase in relative risk linked to late motherhood, the absolute chance of health problems remained small for these women.

Deaths from cardiovascular disease, for example, increased from 2.3 per cent among women who gave birth

young to 3.9 per cent among older mothers. Heart attack risk increased from 2.5 per cent to 3 per cent, ischaemic stroke risk from 2.4 per cent to 3.8 per cent, and haemorrhagic stroke risk from 0.5 per cent to 1 per cent.

Lead researcher Professor Adnan Qureshi said: ‘Women with a late pregnancy need to be aware of their increased risk and take steps to improve their cardiovascular health.

‘ Their doctors need to remain vigilant years later in monitoring these women’s risk factors through physical examination and, perhaps, more tests and earlier interventions to prevent stroke and other cardiovascular events.’

But Professor Jeremy Pearson, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said he was not convinced and that women should not be alarmed. He said the study ‘shows a small number of women were at increased risk of stroke from a bleed on the brain’ but that heart attack risk, ischaemic stroke and overall death could be explained by lifestyle and age, not late pregnancy.

Dr Geoffrey Trew, a fertility expert at Imperial College London, said women should ensure they stay healthy if they are thinking about starting a family later in life.

He said: ‘It is important for people to sort out lifestyle issues before they become pregnant – that is especially the case for older couples because blood pressure and the risk of type 2 diabetes increases with age.’

The proportion of women giving birth over 40 in England and Wales has trebled in the last 30 years, from 4.9 per 1,000 in 1984 to 14.7 per 1,000 in 2014. The British Fertility Society last year warned that celebrities who have children in their 40s are giving women false hope about late motherhood as they will often have used IVF or donor eggs but do not make this public.

Meanwhile women who never have children seem to be at a higher risk of womb cancer. Cancer Research UK yesterday published figures showing rates of womb cancer increased by a quarter in the last decade – but the risk of the illness is a third higher in women who have never had children. It is thought this is because they are more exposed to the hormone oestrogen, which may trigger tumour growth.

‘Need to remain vigilant years later’