Maternal tobacco consumption during pregnancy and risk of congenital heart diseases in offspring

Abstract

Background: Maternal tobacco consumption (both active and passive) during pregnancy as a risk factor for congenital heart diseases in off-springs has been studied by some workers with a small number of subjects hence requires to be evaluated through a study with a significant size of cohort. The objective of the study was to find out the association between maternal tobacco consumption and the risk of CHDs among their off springs.Methods: This is a hospital based, comparative, cross sectional, observational study. 518 children with CHDs, confirmed by echocardiography were included as cases and 240 children without any obvious congenital anomaly matched for age and sex were taken as controls. The following clinical observations were collected through questionnaires in a predesigned Performa: maternal and paternal tobacco consumption during pregnancy; maternal medical, gestational and obstetric history; and other birth defects.Results: Children from case and control groups were comparable with respect to age and sex at the inclusion in the study. Out of the total 758 study participants, 73 children (14.01%) with CHDs had history of maternal tobacco consumption (active consumption) during pregnancy and 86 children (16.6%) with CHDs had history of paternal smoking habit (P value was highly significant).Conclusions: Tobacco consumption during pregnancy (both active and passive) confer an increased risk of CHDs in their off springs (p value <0.001).

Genetic predisposition to the development of congenital heart diseases: Role of xenobiotic biotransformation genes

“…Health status of the mother who plans the birth of the child is the most important factor. Smoking status (Dev, Sharma, & Sharma, 2018), alcohol (Wen et al, 2016) and drug consumption (Lind et al, 2017) of parents, diabetes mellitus of mother (Øyen et al, 2016), folic acid (Øyen et al, 2019) and other medicine (Lennestål, Olausson, & Källén, 2009) intake are although play the role in the CHD risk. Genetic mechanisms of the development of heart defects are still not clear, which is explained by the difficulty in the implementation of hereditary information in a predisposition to CHD due to its multifactorial nature (Chaix et al, 2016).…”