Introduction & Objective: The coronary artery disease (CAD) is the second cause of mortality in women over 40. The risk factors of CAD in females include: age over 55, BP>140/90, smoking and hyperlipidemia. As plasma lipoprotein level changes significantly during pregnancy, low density lipoprotein reaches its peak approximately in the week 36 of pregnancy. Hypercholesterolemia induced by pregnancy may be atherogen. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between multi-parity and CAD.

Material & Methods: In this case-control study 230 women over 50 y were studied in the Ekbatan Hospital, Hamadan in 2005. 115 subjects out of them were considered as case group, who were selected among admitted patients with CAD in the heart ward. Other 115 cases without CAD who were admitted in internal and surgery wards, with normal cardiovascular consultation were selected as control group. Patients with known risk factors such as hypertension, hyperlipidemia, diabetic, obesity, active and passive smoker, Type A personality and any record of hormone replacement therapy were excluded. The data were analyzed using the commercially available software package SPSS version 11. Student?s t-test and &chi² were used for analysis and results were expressed as mean ± SD, and p<0.05 was considered as significant level.

Results: Mean ages of the first parity in case and control groups were 16.09±2 and 16.3±2 y respectively that the difference was not statistically significant. Mean of parity in case and control groups was 7.5±3.1 and 5.9±1.9 respectively (P<0.001). The average of cholesterol, HDL and LDL in control group were 164.2, 102.6 and 34.5 mg/dl respectively, and in control they were 164.1, 105.4 and 40.5 mg/dl respectively.  

Conclusion: Exposure with repeated hyperlipidemia induced pregnancy may increase the risk of CAD particularly in women with more than 4 parity. Age of the first pregnancy was not observed as a risk factor of CAD.