Frequency of blood donations and coronary heart disease risk in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study

Researchers followed nearly 40,000 male health professionals aged 40 to 75 for about eight years. The men reported how often they donated blood, and researchers tracked heart attacks and deaths from coronary heart disease, meaning disease caused by narrowed heart arteries. Men who donated blood did not have a clearly lower risk than men who did not donate. The study could not show that donating blood itself caused any change in risk.

What this means for you: You can donate blood to help other people, but this study does not support doing it specifically to prevent heart disease. It was an observational study, so healthier habits or other differences between donors and non-donors may have affected the results.