Overweight African-American Women Deliver More Babies Preterm

Pregnant African-American women who are obese face a greater risk of delivering their child preterm compared to other races, say researchers at Boston University School of Medicine.

According to the press release annoucing the study, a baby who is born at less than 37 weeks of gestation is considered to be preterm, a plight that occurs more often among black women than white women and is a leading cause of infant morbidity and mortality in the U.S. Moreover, the authors explain that obesity has also been linked to intrauterine infections, systematic inflammation, dyslipidemia, and hyperinsulinemia, all factors which may increase the changes of delivering a baby preterm.

Using data from the Slone Epidemiology Center's Black Women's Health Study, a team of researchers, led by Lauren Wise, ScD, an associate professor of epidemiology at Boston University, compared mothers of over 1,000 infants born 3 or more weeks early to mother of more than 7,000 full-term infants. Both types of preterm births, medically-indicated and spontaneous (occuring for reasons other than medically-related) were examined.

The findings revealed that obesity increased the risk of medically-indicated pre-term birth and very early spontaneous pre-term birth (<32 weeks), and underweight increased the risk of both pre-term birth subtypes.

"Our data suggest that it is especially important for obese women to adhere to the Institute of Medicine's guidelines for pregnancy weight gain to reduce their risk of preterm birth," Wise concluded.

The study's findings appear online in Epidemiology.