Risk of heart issues is higher if you gave birth at a young age

WOMEN who gave birth at a young age are at greater risk of heart attack and stroke, a study has found.

Those with several children and those whose periods started early are also more likely to have cardiovascular problems, researchers say.

Experts suggest doctors should consider these factors alongside conventional risks – such as poor diet and lack of exercise – when assessing women for heart-related problems. They warned that treating heart issues as something that ‘mainly affects men’ is costing women their lives.

More than 800,000 women in the UK have coronary heart disease and it kills twice as many women as breast cancer each year.

For the study, which was published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, researchers at Imperial College London, Cambridge and Yale School of Public Health analysed data involving more than 100,000 women.

Study author Dr Maddalena Ardissino, from Imperial, said the cardiovascular risks they noted ‘can be minimised if traditional risk factors such as body mass index (BMI) and blood pressure are well-controlled’.