BACKGROUND Maternal education is associated with the birthweight of offspring. We sought to quantify the role of maternal body mass index (BMI) and smoking as intermediary variables between maternal education and birthweight at term. METHODS We examined the association between maternal education, BMI, smoking and offspring's birthweight among women who delivered at term in the Danish National...

The authors investigated whether polymorphisms in two maternal metabolic genes, cytochrome P-450 1A1 (CYP1A1) MspI and epoxide hydrolase 1 (EPHX1) Tyr113His, affect the association of maternal passive smoking with infant birth weight. The study was conducted in a cohort of 1,388 newly married mothers of liveborn singletons who worked in textile mills in Anqing, China, from 1996 to 2000. Multipl...

A recent cohort study suggested that maternal smoking during pregnancy might be a risk factor for childhood obesity. Data from the obligatory school entry health examination in six Bavarian (Germany) public health offices in 1999-2000 were used to assess the relation between maternal smoking during pregnancy and childhood obesity (n = 6,483 German children aged 5.00-6.99 years). A body mass ind...

Maternal Smoking I wish to address the statement regarding maternal smoking and breastfeeding. In your article, it states, “Maternal smoking is not an absolute contraindication to breastfeeding but should be strongly discouraged, because it is associated with an increased incidence in infant respiratory allergy.” After this false information, you have cited reference 102. I scrolled down to the...

OBJECTIVE Previous studies have linked maternal smoking during pregnancy with behavioral disturbance in children. However, additional evidence is needed to address the causality of the relationship. The present study analyses result from an Australian cohort of 5342 5-year-old children whose mothers were recruited early in pregnancy. METHODS Smoking history was gathered for prepregnancy, firs...

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to examine whether smoking during pregnancy is associated with symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in offspring and whether these effects are additional to genetic influences. METHOD Children's ADHD symptoms (parent- and teacher-rated), maternal smoking during pregnancy, conduct disorder symptoms, and family adversity were assessed w...

BACKGROUND Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is associated with factors such as maternal smoking and low birthweight, which may be linked causally. Recent pathological studies have shown evidence for growth retardation at organ level in SIDS infants whose weights at birth were above the tenth centile, and were not therefore recognized as growth retarded clinically. It might be of value to ide...

BACKGROUND The maternal variables that affect fetal development and correlate with necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), the most common gastrointestinal emergency in premature infants, are not well defined. We hypothesized that maternal risk factors were the primary determinant of future development of NEC. METHODS Patients with NEC were identified from an established NICU database and were contr...

Inconsistent results have been reported from studies evaluating the association of maternal smoking with birth of a Down syndrome child. Control of known risk factors, particularly maternal age, has also varied across studies. By using a population-based case-control design (775 Down syndrome cases and 7,750 normal controls) and Washington State birth record data for 1984-1994, the authors exam...

OBJECTIVE The present study aimed to examine the association between maternal passive smoking during pregnancy and the risk of spontaneous PTD and to explore the potential interaction of the single or joint gene polymorphism of CYP1A1 and GSTs with maternal passive smoking on the risk of spontaneous PTD. METHOD We investigated whether the association between maternal passive smoking and PTD c...