smoking during pregnancy

Had the mother continued to smoke heavily during her pregnancy, it would have been possible to find higher levels of tobacco smoke metabolites in her infant's meconium, American researchers have found. Meconium is a tar-like stool that is passed by a newborn during the first few days of birth.

The recently released findings were published in BioMed Central's journal, Environmental Health. The team from the University Of North Carolina measured tobacco smoke metabolites in meconium samples from 337 babies, and found that it revealed how much cigarette smoke their mothers were exposed to during their pregnancies.

Concentrations of smoke metabolites were higher among infants born to active smokers, compared with women with second-hand or no exposure. The findings have further confirmed the adverse complications of smoking during pregnancy. Dr Chee Jing Jye, medical director of The Obstetrics And Gynaecology Centre, said smoking has been strongly associated with a host of pregnancy problems such as miscarriages, pre-term delivery, low birth weight, still births and birth defects including clefts and undescended testes in male babies.

"Smoking during late pregnancy has also been associated with placenta abruptio, whereby the placenta detaches from the wall of the womb prematurely. This results in oxygen deprivation in the baby and severe bleeding for both mother and child," she added.