More than 1200 St Helenian schoolchildren were studied in 1973 and 1978 to determine how social factors affected growth. The association of short stature with large family size was confirmed and shown to be concentrated in the earlier members of the sibship. This was independent of birth interval. Association between birth interval and stature was most pronounced for the spacing following the i...

background: due to complex causal framework of neonatal mortality, improvement of this health indicator is quite gradual and it's decreasing trend is not as great as other health indicators such as infant and under 5 mortality rates.this study was conducted to evaluate neonatal mortality risk factors based on nested case-control design. methods:  the study population was 6900 neonates who were ...

Background: Macrosomia is defined as the birth weight of greater than or equal to 4,000 grams, which is considered to be a public health issue threatening mothers and neonates. Studies indicate that the prevalence rate of macrosomia is on the rise in developing countries. The present study aimed to evaluate the influential factors in the occurrence of neonatal macrosomia. Methods: This case-co...

Reports on seasonal variation in birth weight are conflicting and inconclusive. No variation was observed by Brenton (1922) or by Bakwin and Bakwin (1929); babies born in the summer were said by Murray (1924), Abels (1926), Toverud (1933), Bivings (1934), Li (1936), and Donald (1939) to be heavier than those born in the winter; Adersen (1899) reported that babies born in the winter were heavier...

Maternal care influences offspring quality and can improve a mother's inclusive fitness. However, improved fitness may only occur when offspring quality (i.e., offspring birth mass) persists throughout life and enhances survival and/or reproductive success. Although maternal body mass, age, and social rank have been shown to influence offspring birth mass, the inter-dependence among these varia...

The relationships between the occurrence of anencephalus and spina bifida, sibship size and birth rank were examined, using linked records for births in British Columbia. Comparison of 414 sibships in which at least one infant had a neural tube defect with 1362 randomly chosen unaffected sibships showed that the affected sibships were larger. There were both more births than expected after the ...

1. Fertility is an important fitness component, but is difficult to measure in slowly reproducing, long-lived animals such as chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). 2. We measured fertility and the effect of measured covariates on fertility in a 43-year sample of birth intervals of chimpanzees from the Gombe National Park, Tanzania using Cox proportional hazards regression with individual-level random ...