Lighting up a cigarette or staying on the job while pregnant could increase a woman’s risk of losing their child, claims a new study published earlier this month in the journal Human Reproduction.
The case-control study, completed by researchers from Osaka University and the Osaka Medical Center and Research Institute for Maternal and Child Health, studied the medical records nearly 1,300 Japanese women in order to determine the primary risk factors for what they dub “early spontaneous abortions.”
“No epidemiological studies have examined risk factors for early spontaneous abortions among Japanese women,” the authors write in their study. “In this matched case-control study, we investigated the associations of reproductive, physical and lifestyle characteristics of women and their husbands with early spontaneous abortion <12 weeks of gestation.”
According to their research, the information collected was for 430 cases in which women suffered a miscarriage and 860 instances in which the infants were delivered. They discovered that the risk of early spontaneous abortions was higher in women who had previously suffered a miscarriage, and the higher number of previous occurrences resulted in increased likelihood that it could happen again.
The conditional odds ratio (OR) for women who had one miscarriage was 1.98, versus 2.36 for two and 8.73 for three or more. In comparison, women who smoked had an OR of 2.39 while those who worked outside the home had an OR of 1.65. In conclusion, the authors said that “smoking and working may be important public health issue targets for the prevention of early spontaneous abortions.”
According to Reuters Health reports, “Overall, the researchers found, women who smoked heavily during pregnancy–at least 20 cigarettes per day–were more than twice as likely as the non-smokers to have a miscarriage”¦ Seven percent (32) of the 430 women who suffered a miscarriage smoked that amount, versus four percent (36) of the 860 women who delivered a baby.”
“The current findings do not prove that smoking, itself, was the reason for the increased miscarriage risk seen in the study group,” the news organization added. “But the researchers were able to account for several other factors, including the women’s reported drinking habits and histories of past miscarriages. And the smoking-miscarriage link remained.”
Dr. Sachiko Baba of Osaka University’s Graduate School of Medicine was the lead author on the study. Joining Baba as study co-authors were Hiroyuki Noda, Masahiro Nakayama, Masako Waguri, Nobuaki Mitsuda and Hiroyasu Iso, all of whom represented either the university or the Osaka Medical Center and Research Institute for Maternal and Child Health.
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