Peer-reviewed article
Child Marriage and Cardiovascular Risk: An Application of the Non-laboratory Framingham Risk Score.
Biplab Kumar Datta, Benjamin E Ansa, Ashley Saucier, Ajay Pandey, Mohammad Rifat Haider et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study examined whether child marriage (marriage before age 18) is associated with increased cardiovascular risk in Indian adults. Using data from over 336,000 women and 49,000 men, researchers calculated predicted heart age and compared it to actual age. Women who married as children had significantly higher cardiovascular risk scores compared to those who married as adults, but men showed no differential risk based on marriage age.
Key points
- Women married as children had 1.06 times higher risk of high predicted heart age and 1.22 times higher risk of very high predicted heart age compared to women married as adults
- No differential cardiovascular risk was found for men based on marriage age
- Results were consistent across different socioeconomic sub-groups
- Child marriage is defined as marriage before age 18 years
- The study used a nationally representative sample of Indian adults aged 30-54
Limitations
The study is cross-sectional and cannot establish causation or the mechanisms through which child marriage affects cardiovascular risk. The use of predicted heart age based on non-laboratory factors may not capture all relevant cardiovascular risk factors.
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Child marriage, defined as marriage before the age of 18 years, is a precocious transition from adolescence to adulthood, which may take a long-term toll on health. AIM: This study aims to assess whether child marriage was associated with added risk of adverse cardiovascular outcomes in a nationally representative sample of Indian adults. METHODS: Applying the non-laboratory-based Framingham algorithm to data on 336,953 women aged 30-49 years and 49,617 men aged 30-54 years, we estimated individual's predicted heart age (PHA). Comparing the PHA with chronological age (CA), we categorized individuals in four groups: (i) low PHA: PHA < CA, (ii) equal PHA: PHA = CA (reference category), (iii) high PHA: PHA > CA by at most 4 years, and (iv) very high PHA: PHA > CA by 5 + years. We estimated multivariable multinomial logistic regressions to obtain relative risks of respective categories for the child marriage indicator. RESULTS: We found that women who were married in childhood had 1.06 (95% CI 1.01-1.10) and 1.22 (95% CI 1.16-1.27) times higher adjusted risks of having high and very high PHA, respectively, compared to women who were married as adults. For men, no differential risks were found between those who were married as children and as adults. These results were generally robust across various socioeconomic sub-groups. CONCLUSIONS: These findings add to the relatively new and evolving strand of literature that examines the role of child marriage on later life chronic health outcomes and provide important insights for public health policies aimed at improving women's health and wellbeing.
Findings the Hub has extracted
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- Intervention
- Assessment of cardiovascular risk using the non-laboratory Framingham Risk Score algorithm in individuals with history of child marriage versus adult marriage
- Population
- Indian women aged 30-49 years (n=336,953) and men aged 30-54 years (n=49,617)
Key finding
Women married in childhood: 1.06 times higher risk of high predicted heart age (95% CI 1.01-1.10)
Datta et al. · PubMed (US National Library of Medicine) · 28 Jan 2024