Low birth weight has been found to be associated with cardiovascular mortality and morbidity and with an adverse profile of several cardiovascular risk factors. The inverse association between birth weight and blood pressure was consistently reported from many populations. Using longitudinal data from the Bogalusa Heart Study (Louisiana), the authors investigated the association between birth w...

Birth interval is one of the major determinants of the fertility rate. In this paper structural change approach is used to study the instabilities in the effects of different socio-economic factors on birth intervals of children with respect to couple's years of marriage factor in Ahvaz-Iran. A class of M-fluctuation tests for parameter instability is used and based on these tests different evi...

Studies investigating the relationship between maternal passive smoking and the risk of preterm birth have reached inconsistent conclusions. A birth cohort study that included 10,095 nonsmoking women who delivered a singleton live birth was carried out in Lanzhou, China, between 2010 and 2012. Exposure to passive smoking during pregnancy was associated with an increased risk of very preterm bir...

BACKGROUND Infant mortality is one of the priority public health issues in developing countries like Nepal. The infant mortality rate (IMR) was 48 and 46 per 1000 live births for the year 2006 and 2011, respectively, a slight reduction during the 5 years' period. A comprehensive analysis that has identified and compared key factors associated with infant mortality is limited in Nepal, and, ther...

Short birth intervals can have adverse consequences for maternal and infant outcomes. Optimal birth spacing is often presumed to be achieved through the practice of family planning and use of contraceptives, yet most of the available research does not address explicitly the contribution of contraceptive-method use to birth spacing or maternal and infant survival. We conducted a systematic liter...

We examine the relationship between birth-to-birth intervals and a variety of mid- and long-term cognitive and socioeconomic outcomes, including high school GPA, cognitive ability, educational attainment, earnings, unemployment status, and receiving government welfare support. Using contemporary Swedish population register data and a within-family sibling comparison design, we find that neither...

Pregnancy complications and cardiovascular disease share some common determinants. It has previously been hypothesized that family history of cardiovascular disease would be associated with low birth weight. Records from 120,317 Scottish births, 1992-2006, were linked to hospital admission and death certificate data for 71,681 pairs of maternal grandparents. There was a negative relation betwee...

This study examines the familial clustering and relative influence of genetic and environmental effects on postterm birth in the Swedish population by considering all full- and half-siblings born in Sweden between 1992 and 2004. Of the eligible 475,429 births, 21% occurred after 41 completed weeks and 5.5% occurred after 42 completed weeks of gestation. Odds of postterm birth increased if mothe...

A rise in the prevalence of diagnosed cases of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been reported in several studies in recent years. While this rise in ASD prevalence is at least partially related to increased awareness and broadened diagnostic criteria, the role of environmental factors cannot be ruled out, especially considering that the cause of most cases of ASD remains unknown. The study of...