Parents who have five or more children may face a higher risk of heart disease than those who have only one or two keiki, according to new findings by public health researchers in the Myron B. Thompson School of Social Work at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
Parents who have five or more children may face a higher risk of heart disease than those who have only one or two keiki, according to new findings by public health researchers in the Myron B. Thompson School of Social Work at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
Researchers led by Sara Hipp, a recent graduate of the Office of Public Health Studies program, looked at data from nearly 25,000 participants ages 50 and older who took part in a national health survey. The findings were published in the Journal of Aging and Health.
“Many studies have linked women’s reproductive characteristics, such as their age at their first childbirth, with their risk of heart disease later in life,” Hipp said. “But there wasn’t much known about the association between family size and heart disease, and very few studies have looked at how fatherhood may relate to men’s risk of heart disease.”
Hipp and her co-authors found that 30 percent of the parents who said they had five or more children had a heart condition, such as coronary heart disease, angina or congestive heart failure. Just 22 percent of those who had only one or two children, and 21 percent of those who had no children, said they had been diagnosed with a heart condition.
Read more at University of Hawaii at Manoa
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