Pregnant women who are stressed during second and third month of pregnancy are at twice at risk of delivering prematurely and losing their pregnancy. For the first time the research shows that revelation to stress can curtail the span of pregnancy and making it more likely for boys to be miscarried or born before time.
The results originated from a study that examined the effect on pregnant women from the stress caused by the Tarapaca earthquake in Chile in 2005. A team led by Prof Florencia Torche and Karine Kleinhaus from New York University, analyzed birth certificates of all infants born between 2004 and 2006 in Chile.
The scale of the earthquake was calculated at nearly eight that is categorized as catastrophic. They found that women who lived flanking to the quake during their second and third months of pregnancy had shorter pregnancies and were at higher risk of delivering pre-term, prior to thirty-seven weeks of gestation.
It was also found that the pregnancies of women exposed to the earthquake in the second month of pregnancy were on average one and half days shorter than pregnant women from the unaffected areas of Chile. The pregnancies of women exposed to the earthquake in the third month were almost two days shorter.
On the whole, about six in one hundred pregnant women had a pre-term birth, but among women exposed to the earthquake in the third month of pregnancy, this went up by three and half percent, meant more than nine women among one hundred delivered early.
Besides, a decline in the sex ratio among those exposed to the earthquake in the third month was nearly six percent, meaning fewer boy babies survived to delivery. The study findings were published online in Human Reproduction, the leading reproductive medicine journal. Earlier research suggested, in times of stress women is more likely to miscarry boys.
There are more male than female live births. The ratio of male to female births is approximately 51:49 meant of every one hundred fifty-one will be boys. Their findings showed nearly six percent decline in this ration, explained Prof Kleinhaus, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Obstetrics & Gynaecology and Environmental Medicine.
Their findings on a decreased sex ratio support this hypothesis and suggest that stress may affect the possibility of male births. Study provided strong evidence that stress independently affected the outcome of pregnancies, rather than being a side-effect of poor housing, poverty and bad diet, concluded Prof Torche. There should be improved access to healthcare for women from the start of pregnancy and even before conception.