Insights culled from the first systematic study of women

The longer a woman is able to reproduce, before she reaches menopause, the less her risk to have heart failure. That, according to a study by Nisha Parikh, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. “This is a very interesting study and a very important study." It is based on medical records of over 160 thousand women gathered by the Women’s Health Initiative in the 1990s – up until 2014. The initiative was set up to address major heath issues causing morbidity and mortality in postmenopausal women. “Over the years the Women’s Health Initiative has been funded by NIH as well as the national Heart Lung and Blood institute. There was a lack of studies on women’s health. And it really represented the first systematic study of women.” Parikh is now planning to expand this research and hopes to discover what exactly drives the association between the menstrual cycle and heart disease.