General Health News
Pregnant Mothers Stop Smoking, Reduce Birth Defects
By: Staff Writer | Tuesday 12 July 2011 12:23 PDT
Pregnant Mothers Stop Smoking, Reduce Birth Defects
According to a recent study conducted by the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Southampton in the U.K. revealed that pregnant women who quit smoking have fewer negative birth outcomes.
Nick Macklon, a professor at the university, and a team of researchers studied more than 50,000 pregnancies to conduct the report. After analyzing them, the team discovered that women who gave up smoking upon hearing they were pregnant gave birth to offspring with similar birthweights to those from mothers who had never smoked.
Mothers who smoked during their pregnancies often give birth to offspring with low birthweights. Smoking during pregnancy also increases the risk of a premature birth, brain damage and abnormalities.
While pregnant mothers are often advised to quit smoking, prior to this study, little information had been accumulated regarding whether their elimination of tobacco had any effect on birthweight.
"Not only was birthweight much better in this group than it was in the groups where the mothers had continued to smoke, but we also found that the babies reached the same gestational age and head circumference as those born to women who had never smoked," said Macklon.
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