Chetwynd EM, et al. - This nested case-control analysis assessed the link between breastfeeding and incident hypertension at ages 40–65 years. Researchers reported that breastfeeding for a long-duration may attenuate the risk of incident hypertension in middle age and must be addressed as a potential preventative health behavior because it is required for only a discrete period of time.

Methods

• In the Black Women’s Health Study (n = 59,001), researchers performed a nested case-control analysis using unconditional logistic regression to estimate the link between breastfeeding and incident hypertension at ages 40–65 years using data collected from 1995 to 2011.
• Controls were frequency-matched 2:1 to 12,513 hypertensive women by age and questionnaire cycle.

Results

• Findings demonstrated that, overall, there was little evidence of association between ever breastfeeding and incident hypertension (odds ratio = 0.97, 95% confidence interval: 0.92, 1.02).
• However, researchers noted that age modified the link (P = 0.02): Breastfeeding was associated with reduced risk of hypertension at ages 40–49 years (odds ratio = 0.92, 95% confidence interval: 0.85, 0.99) but not at older ages.
• Data reported that the risk of hypertension at ages 40–49 years decreased with increasing duration of breastfeeding (P for trend = 0.08).