Women who breastfed were less likely to develop heart disease or stroke, or die from cardiovascular disease than women who did not breastfeed, according to a meta-analysis published today in a pregnancy feature issue of the Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA), an open access peer-reviewed journal of the American Heart Association.
The special issue, JAHA Spotlight on Pregnancy and Its Impact on Maternal and Offspring Cardiovascular Health, includes about a dozen research articles exploring various cardiovascular considerations during pregnancy for mother and child.
The health benefits of breastfeeding for children are well known. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), it is linked to fewer respiratory infections and a lower risk of death from infectious diseases among children who were breastfed.
Breastfeeding has also been linked to maternal health benefits, including a lower risk of type 2 diabetes, ovarian cancer, and breast cancer.
“Previous studies have investigated the association between breastfeeding and the risk of cardiovascular disease in the mother; However, findings were inconsistent regarding the strength of the association and, specifically, the relationship between different durations of breastfeeding and cardiovascular disease risk. Therefore, it was important to systematically review the available literature and mathematically combine all the evidence on this topic,” said senior author Peter Willeit, M.D., M.Phil., Ph.D., professor of clinical epidemiology at the Medical University of Innsbruck in Innsbruck, Austria.
The researchers reviewed health information from eight studies conducted between 1986 and 2009 in Australia, China, Norway, Japan and the US and one multinational study.
The review included health records of nearly 1.2 million women (with an average age of 25 years at first birth) and analyzed the relationship between breastfeeding and the mother’s individual cardiovascular risk.
"We collected information, for example, on how long the women had breastfed during their lives, the number of births, the age at first birth, and whether the women had a heart attack or stroke later in life or not," she said. first author Lena Tschiderer, Ph.D., postdoctoral researcher at the Medical University of Innsbruck.
The review found:
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Despite breastfeeding recommendations from organizations such as the WHO and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which recommend that babies be exclusively breastfed until six months of age, only 1 of Every 4th baby receives only breast milk for the first six months. months of life. African American babies in the U.S. are less likely than white babies to be breastfed for any length of time, according to the CDC.
“It is important for women to be aware of the benefits of breastfeeding for the health of their babies and also for their own personal health,” Willeit said. “Furthermore, these findings from high-quality studies conducted around the world highlight the need to encourage and support breastfeeding, such as breastfeeding-friendly work environments and breastfeeding education and programs for families before and after childbirth. ”.
The U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed countries, with cardiovascular disease being the leading cause, according to the American Heart Association’s 2021 Call to Action Maternal Health and Saving Mothers policy statement. The statement, which outlines public policies that address racial and ethnic disparities in maternal health, notes that approximately 2 in 3 deaths during pregnancy are preventable.
“While the benefits of breastfeeding for infants and children are well established, mothers should be encouraged to breastfeed their babies knowing that they are improving their children’s health as well as their own,” said Shelley Miyamoto, MD, FAHA, chair of the American Heart Association Council on Lifelong Congenital Heart Disease and Heart Health in Young People (Young Hearts), Jack Cooper Millisor Chair in Pediatric Heart Disease, and director of the Cardiomyopathy Program at Children’s Hospital Colorado in Dawn. “Raising awareness about the multifaceted benefits of breastfeeding could be particularly helpful for those mothers who are debating breastfeeding versus bottle feeding.
“It should be especially empowering for a mother to know that by breastfeeding she is providing optimal nutrition for her baby while reducing her personal risk of heart disease.”
A limitation of this meta-analysis is that little information was available on women who breastfed for more than two years. "If we had this additional data, we would have been able to calculate better estimates of the association between the duration of breastfeeding and the development of cardiovascular disease in mothers," Tschiderer said.
Co-authors are Lisa Seekircher, MS; Setor K. Kunutsor, M.D., Ph.D.; Sanne A.E. Peters, Ph.D.; and Linda M. O’Keeffe, Ph.D.
