Jump to full article: Reuters, 2008-04-09
Intro: A woman who smokes during pregnancy increases the risk that her child will be born with a heart defect, a new study published in Pediatrics shows.
To clarify the relationship between prenatal smoke exposure and congenital heart defects, Dr. Sadia Malik of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock and her colleagues evaluated 3,067 infants born with heart defects, unrelated to genetic syndromes, who were included in the National Birth Defects Prevention Study. . . .
The more a woman smoked, the greater was the likelihood that she would have an infant with a defect. Women who smoked 25 or more cigarettes daily during pregnancy were more likely to have infants with obstructions on the right side of the heart. . . .
Malik's group found no relationship between second-hand smoke exposure and congenital heart defects. . . .
"If even a fraction of congenital heart defects and other birth defects could be prevented by decreasing maternal tobacco use, it would result in improved reproductive outcomes and a saving of millions of health care dollars," they conclude.
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