asthma is considered to be the most common respiratory disorder complicating pregnancy. seventy-six asthmatic and 152 non-asthmatic pregnant women were studied. maternal asthma was significantly associated with adverse infant outcomes, including prematurity, low birth weight and the need for cesarean delivery. the results of this study could indicate that pregnant women with asthma were at subs...

In this review, the authors summarize current knowledge on maternal nutritional requirements during pregnancy, with a focus on the nutrients that have been most commonly investigated in association with birth outcomes. Data sourcing and extraction included searches of the primary resources establishing maternal nutrient requirements during pregnancy (e.g., Dietary Reference Intakes), and search...

Stress is a word that can be used to explain the way we feel, or it can be used to describe something that happens to someone. For most pregnant woman, pregnancy is a happy and breathtaking time, however, pregnant for some woman can be a source of stress, depression and anxiety. These factors can be risk factors for adverse outcomes for mothers and children. Anxiety in pregnancy is associated w...

We study the impact of marriages resulting from bride kidnapping on infant birth weight. Bride kidnapping-a form of forced marriage-implies that women are abducted by men and have little choice other than to marry their kidnappers. Given this lack of choice over the spouse, we expect adverse consequences for women in such marriages. Remarkable survey data from the Central Asian nation of Kyrgyz...

This paper explores the pathways of the determinants of unfavourable birth outcomes, such as premature birth, the size of the baby at birth, and Caesarean section deliveries, in Kenya using graphical log-linear chain models. The results show that a number of factors that do not have direct associations with unfavourable birth outcomes contribute to these outcomes indirectly through intermediate...

background: to determine whether using mechanical ventilation in neonatal intensive care unit (nicu) influences motor development of low birth weight (lbw) infants and to compare their motor development with normal birth weight (nbw) infants at the age of 8 to 12 months using peabody developmental motor scale 2 (pdms-2). methods: this cross sectional study was conducted on 70 lbw infants in two...

BACKGROUND Racial disparities in birth outcomes persist in North Carolina and the United States. We examined patterns of birth outcomes and womens health measures in North Carolina by race and age to portray the largest disparities. We wanted to see if our data were consistent with the "weathering hypothesis," which holds that the health of African American women may begin to deteriorate in ear...

Every year, 1 million new-borns, on average, die from various complications caused by premature birth [1,2]. Low birth weight (LBW) has long been used as an important public health indicator. LBW is not a proxy for any single dimension of either maternal or perinatal health outcomes [3]. The main cause of neonatal LBW is premature birth and intrauterine growth restriction, which are most often ...

BACKGROUND Sub-Saharan African women are often treated as a single group in epidemiological studies of immigrant birth outcomes, potentially masking variations across countries. METHODS Cross-sectional population-based study of 432,567 singleton births in Victoria, Australia comparing mothers born in one of four East African countries (453 Eritreans, 1094 Ethiopians, 1,861 Somali and 1,404 Su...