• Tone Natland Fagerhaug, Siri Forsmo, Geir Wenberg Jacobsen, Kristian Midthjell, Lene Frost Andersen, and Ivar Lund Nilsen Tom T.
• Department of Public Health and General Practice, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, PO Box 8904 MTFS, 7491 Trondheim, Norway. tone.natland.fagerhaug@ntnu.no.
• Bmc Public Health. 2013 Nov 13; 13: 1070.

BackgroundRecent studies suggest that lactation has long-term effects on risk for cardiovascular disease in women, but the effects on cardiovascular mortality are less well known.MethodIn a Norwegian population-based prospective cohort study, we studied the association of lifetime duration of lactation with cardiovascular mortality in 21,889 women aged 30 to 85 years who attended the second Nord-Trøndelag Health Survey (HUNT2) in 1995-1997. The cohort was followed for mortality through 2010 by a linkage with the Cause of Death Registry. Adjusted hazard ratios (HR) for death from all causes and cardiovascular disease were calculated using Cox regression.ResultsDuring follow-up, 1,246 women died from cardiovascular disease. Parous women younger than 65 years who had never lactated had a higher cardiovascular mortality than the reference group of women who had lactated 24 months or more (HR 2.77, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.28, 5.99). There was some evidence of a U-shaped association, where women who reported lactating 7-12 months had a HR of 0.55 (95% CI: 0.27, 1.09). No clear associations were observed among women 65 years or older.ConclusionsExcess cardiovascular mortality rates were observed among parous women younger than 65 years who had never lactated. These findings support the hypothesis that lactation may have long-term influences on maternal cardiovascular health.

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