If you're pregnant and smoke, you double your chance of losing your baby. But if you can quit smoking in your first trimester, that risk gets wiped out completely, a new Danish study says.
Researchers found that exposure to tobacco smoke in the womb doubled the risk of stillbirth, and that the infant mortality rate for smokers was 1.8 times greater than for non-smokers.
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But, the researchers say, women who gave up the habit in the first trimester had the same rates for stillbirth and infant mortality as women who never touched a cigarette during their pregnancy.
Dr Kirsten Wisborg, a professor of gynaecology and obstetrics at Aarhus University in Denmark, led a team that found that smoking during pregnancy increases the risk of stillbirth and infant mortality. "The risk is doubled in children born to smokers, compared to children of non-smokers, " Wisborg says.
But she says, if a pregnant women stops smoking in the beginning of her pregnancy, the risk of stillbirth and infant death is reduced to the risk found in non-smokers.
That risk, she adds, " is not explained by other factors such as maternal age, alcohol intake, or socioeconomic status."
The study concludes that - with a smoking rate of 30 percent - 25 percent of all stillbirths and 20 percent of all infant deaths in a population could be avoided if all pregnant smokers stopped smoking by the 16th week of pregnancy.
The findings appear in the August 15 issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology.
When a pregnant woman smokes, two of the major toxins from cigarette smoke - nicotine and carbon monoxide - pass through the placenta to the foetus, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. This can cause pregnancy complications, premature birth, and low birth weight. Smoking mothers also put their infants at risk for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), poor lung development, asthma and respiratory infections.
"Every cigarette counts," Wisborg says. "Stop smoking before you get pregnant and, if needed, use a nicotine substitution. And if you can't stop smoking, reduce the number of cigarettes you smoke as much as possible."
"You shouldn't interpret this study to mean that there's no risk in smoking during the first trimester," adds Dr. Norman Edelman, president of the American Lung Association. "People need to remember that smokers have smaller babies, those babies have smaller lungs, and they are more likely to develop asthma. Nobody knows when that damage takes place."
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