Shorter women apparently end up having shorter pregnancies, smaller babies abd a higher risk of delivering prematurely acccording to Louis Muglia, director for the Center for Prevention of Preterm Babies at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. In fact, Muglia states that although the difference is relatively minute, noting that “for each increase of 1 centimeter of height, women experienced .04 more gestational days.”The conclusion was based on a study of approximately 3,500 women and their babies in Norway, Finland and Demark, published in yesterday’s issue of the journal PLOS Medicine.
While the study suggests tat genetic factors related to height play an important role in determining the fetal environment during pregnancy, there are a lot of other factors that can contribute to premature births and the overall health of newborns, including the mother’s own history of disease, as well as her weight, stress level, tobacco or alcohol use, air and water pollution and lack of prenatal care. Yet despite all the medical care available here, the CDC reports that the United States has one of the highest rate of preterm births of any “resource rich” country affecting nearly 500,000 babies each year, and accounts for approximately 1/.3 of all infant deaths. They also noted that black babies born in the US had a 2.4 higher mortality rate than their white counterparts.
