WOMEN WHO stop smoking in the first 15 weeks of pregnancy can reduce their risk of having premature or underweight babies, an international study involving University College Cork has found.
Smoking in pregnancy has long been linked to premature births and babies born under weight, as well as to miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, stillbirth and neonatal death.
But a study involving researchers from UCC has found women who give up smoking before they are 15 weeks pregnant can reverse their elevated risk of complications.
The international study, Scope, has also identified a set of proteins in the blood of pregnant women which may predict whether they will develop pre-eclampsia in later pregnancy.
Pre-eclampsia is a life-threatening condition that causes extremely high blood pressure in first-time mothers. It is believed to be caused by substances released from the placenta that trigger problems in the mother’s circulation.
According to the research, women who do not quit smoking by 15 weeks of pregnancy are three times more likely than non- smokers to give birth prematurely and twice as likely to have low-birth-weight babies.
But those who do quit on time bring their risk of complications down to the same level as non-smokers.
Some 10,000 women are taking part in the study, which involves six universities around the world.
The results released yesterday came from over 2,500 women in New Zealand and Australia.
Results for 500 women, recruited from Cork, will be added to the study to examine the effect in Irish women.
In all, 3,000 Irish women will take part.
Prof Louise Kenny, department of obstetrics and gynaecology, UCC, said the findings were significant because they showed that maternity care providers should see women early in pregnancy and emphasise the importance of giving up smoking before 15 weeks.
She said the study also found that women who stopped smoking by 15 weeks were not more stressed than those who continued.
“This challenges the widely held assumption that giving up smoking leads to increased stress, and it’s an important message for women who are daunted by the idea of trying to quit,” she said.
She also said the discovery of biomarker proteins linked to pre-eclampsia opened the way for development of a screening test for the condition.
Early detection would prevent some women from developing severe complications such as seizures, liver impairment and kidney failure, she said.
A further study will follow babies from birth until they are two years old, to determine why some go on to develop disease while others remain healthy.
