{"id":45118,"date":"2018-06-29T14:03:07","date_gmt":"2018-06-29T14:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/en.bornomalanews.com\/?p=45118"},"modified":"2018-06-29T14:03:07","modified_gmt":"2018-06-29T14:03:07","slug":"paternal-smoking-linked-to-miscarriage-risk-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/en.bornomalanews.com\/?p=45118","title":{"rendered":"Paternal smoking linked to miscarriage risk: Study"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"\"Would-be fathers may increase their partner\u2019s risk of miscarriage by smoking during the pregnancy, or even during the time leading up to conception, a large study from China suggests.<\/p>\n

Based on data for nearly 6 million pregnancies, researchers found that women whose partner smoked during the first few months of the pregnancy were 17 percent more likely to miscarry than women with nonsmoking partners.<\/p>\n

Women whose partner quit smoking around the time of conception had an 18 percent lower risk of miscarriage than those whose smoking partner didn\u2019t quit, the study team reports in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cAlthough we have known for a long time that if the mother smokes there is an increased risk for adverse pregnancy outcomes, dads who smoke also influence the \u2018success\u2019 of the pregnancy,\u201d Dr. Alison Holloway, who was not involved in the study, said in an email.<\/p>\n

The study\u2019s size is especially noteworthy, said Holloway, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.<\/p>\n

The authors collected data from nearly 5.8 million non-smoking women aged 18-49 and their husbands in rural China. The couples were participating in a national free pre-pregnancy checkups project from 2010 to 2016. That service included three stages: a preconception health examination, an early-pregnancy follow-up within the first three months after conception, and a pregnancy outcome follow-up about a year after the early-pregnancy exam.<\/p>\n

About 29 percent of the male partners were smokers, and the overall rate of miscarriages was about 2.5 percent.<\/p>\n

When the male partner was a nonsmoker, however, the miscarriage rate was 2.38 percent, compared with 2.92 percent when the male partner smoked.<\/p>\n

When the prospective father quit smoking before or just after conception, the miscarriage rate was 2.79 percent, compared with 3.35 percent when the father did not quit.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cThe importance of tobacco control, specifically pertaining to paternal smoking, should be emphasized, and husbands should quit smoking when planning a pregnancy,\u201d write the study\u2019s authors, many of whom work for China\u2019s National Research Institute for Family Planning in Beijing, and who did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n

While the authors identified an association between male partner smoking and miscarriage, the study doesn\u2019t prove that one caused the other. It also did not examine the mechanisms by which paternal smoking might influence pregnancy loss.<\/p>\n

There are at least two possible ways that a husband smoking might influence a miscarriage, Holloway said. A husband smoking might expose his wife to chemicals through secondhand and thirdhand smoke – that is, smoke deposits on clothes, furniture, carpets, etc. Alternatively, smoking might impact the quality of the father\u2019s sperm, leading to genetic mutations that could in turn lead to pregnancy loss.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cAlthough they have addressed the impact of paternal smoking, you still can\u2019t determine how dad\u2019s smoking behavior impacts miscarriage risk,\u201d she told Reuters Health.<\/p>\n

The inability to demonstrate causality is one of the study\u2019s main limitations, Dr. Zev Williams, Chief of the division of reproductive endocrinology and infertility at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City, said in an email. He also noted that the study was limited by its dependence on patient recollection and didn\u2019t measure actual levels of many of the toxins produced by smoking.<\/p>\n

Williams, who was not involved in the study, described pregnancy as \u201ca precious but precarious thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is \u201cvery important to try to optimize all the factors that can help achieve a healthy pregnancy,\u201d he noted. \u201cWhile a lot of focus has been on the mother\u2019s health, this study highlights the importance of her environment and the partner\u2019s contribution to the health of the pregnancy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Would-be fathers may increase their partner\u2019s risk of miscarriage by smoking during the pregnancy, or even during the time leading up to conception, a large study from China suggests. Based on data for nearly 6 million pregnancies, researchers found that women whose partner smoked during the first few months of the pregnancy were 17 percent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":45119,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\t\n