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 ...

Background: Obesity has been associated to negative effects on natural fertility and a worse prognosis when assisted reproduction techniques are performed. Patients attending for fertility treatments are often advised to optimize their weights to improve outcomes. There are doubts about how effective are weight-loss interventions for improving fertility in women who are overweight or obese. Mat...

BACKGROUND There is accumulating evidence that the type of work and environmental exposures in the working environment may have adverse effects on foetal development. AIM To compare the risk of low birth weight (LBW), small-for-gestational age (SGA) and pre-term delivery (PD) in broad categories of maternal occupation including farming and forestry; factory, mining and construction; office, n...

OBJECTIVES To report differences in neonatal health outcomes for a community-based antenatal program, the Aboriginal Maternity Group Practice Program (AMGPP; the intervention group), compared with two matched control groups eligible for standard antenatal care. DESIGN Non-randomised intervention study using data from the Western Australian Midwives Notification System. Regression models were ...

BACKGROUND Birth weight is known to fluctuate with season of birth, however, there is little information about seasonal variation in neonatal anthropometric measures. AIMS The aim of this study was to examine seasonal fluctuations in birth weight and selected anthropometric measures. STUDY DESIGN AND SUBJECTS The birth weight of singletons born after at least 37 weeks gestation was extracte...

The inverse associations between birth weight and later adverse health outcomes and the positive associations between adult body size and poor health imply that increases in relative body size between birth and adulthood may be undesirable. In this paper, the authors describe life course path analysis, a method that can be used to jointly estimate associations between body sizes at different ti...

BACKGROUND The association between chronic exposure to air pollution and adverse health outcomes has not been well studied. OBJECTIVE This project investigated the impact of chronic exposure to high ozone levels on childhood asthma admissions in New York State. METHODS We followed a birth cohort born in New York State during 1995-1999 to first asthma admission or until 31 December 2000. We ...

Zinc deficiency during pregnancy has been related to adverse pregnancy outcomes. However, the results of zinc-supplementation trials have not been consistent in improvement of pregnancies outcomes. This study was undertaken to investigate whether zinc supplementation was associated with pregnancy complications in Iranian women during the last 2 trimesters. It also assessed the anthropometric me...