Risk factors associated with SGA births in other countries are also important in New Zealand. Smoking in pregnancy is an important and potentially modifiable behaviour, and efforts to decrease the number of women who smoke during pregnancy should be encouraged.
Objective
To determine prevalence, clinical association and predictive power of antiphospholipid antibodies in pregnancy.
Design
To test for the presence of anticardiolipin antibodies and lupus anticoagulant in order to confirm prevalence data which imply that each antibody has the same clinical significance. A detailed obstetric history and the outcome measures were obtained from each patient in the study.
Setting
National Women's Hospital, Auckland, New Zealand.
Subjects
Nine hundred and thirty‐three consecutively booked pregnant women.
Main outcome measures
Prevalence of auto‐antibodies; perinatal morbidity and mortality; incidence of preeclampsia, growth retardation and fetal distress.
Results
Nine women (1.0%) had anticardiolipin antibodies, 11 (1.2%) had lupus anticoagulant and two had both antibodies. The fetal mortality rate for women with antibodies was 167/1000. Pre‐eclampsia occurred significantly more often in women with auto‐antibodies.
Conclusion
The presence of antiphospholipid antibodies is frequently associated with adverse pregnancy outcome (9/18 pregnancies). High titre anticardiolipin antibodies carry a poor prognosis.
Aims: To assess the effect of maternal diet during pregnancy on the risk of delivering a baby who is small for gestational age (SGA). Methods: Case-control study of 844 cases (SGA) and 870 controls (appropriate size for gestational age (AGA)). Only term (37+ completed weeks of gestation) infants were included. Retrospective food frequency questionnaires were completed at birth on the diet at the time of conception and in the last month of pregnancy. Results: At the time of conception, mothers of AGA infants ate significantly more servings of carbohydrate rich food and fruit, and were more likely to have taken folate and vitamin supplements than mothers of SGA infants. There was some evidence that mothers of AGA infants also ate more servings of dairy products, meat, and fish (0.05 , p , 0.1). However, after adjustment for maternal ethnicity, smoking, height, weight, hypertension, and occupation, fish intake (p = 0.04), carbohydrate-rich foods (p = 0.04), and folate supplementation (p = 0.02) were associated with a reduced risk of SGA. In the last month of pregnancy, only iron supplementation was associated with a reduced risk of SGA (p = 0.05) after adjustment for potential confounders. Conclusions: This study suggests that small variations in maternal diets within the normal range during pregnancy in developed countries are associated with differences in birth weight.
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