Women who have miscarried or had an abortion in the past run three times the normal risk of having a subsequent low birthweight baby, suggests a new study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. Low birthweight (under 2,500 g) is one of the major contributors to deaths among newborn babies and infants. Based on more than 45,500 mother and child pairs, the study found that there was a strong association between miscarriage and abortion and an early or underweight birth, even after adjusting for other influential factors, such as smoking, high blood pressure and heavy drinking.
Women who had had one, two, or three or more miscarriages or abortions in the past were almost three, five, and 9 times as likely to give birth to an underweight child as those without previous miscarriages or abortions.
Similarly, women who had one miscarriage or abortion were 67 percent more likely to have a premature birth, while those who had had three or more were over three times as likely to do so compared with those with no history of miscarriage or abortion.
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Source: British Medical Journal
