Parity, breastfeeding and risk of coronary heart disease: A pan-European case-cohort study.

Objective: There is uncertainty about the direction and magnitude of the associations between parity, breastfeeding and the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD). We examined the separate and combined associations of parity and breastfeeding practices with the incidence of CHD later in life among women in a large, pan-European cohort study.

Methods: Data were used from European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC)-CVD, a case-cohort study nested within the EPIC prospective study of 520,000 participants from 10 countries.