According to eLife, women who were exposed to smoke from forest fires during pregnancy were at a higher likelihood of giving birth to a newborn with very low birth weight.
The study included over 220,000 newborns as part of a case-control study released by Chinese co-author Jiajianghui Li and colleagues.
“We selected mothers from the geocoded Demographic and Health Survey with at least two children and valid birthweight records. Newborns affiliated with the same mother were defined as a family group,” based on the co-authors’ findings.
“We determined the associations of the within-group variations in landscape fire smoke exposure with birthweight differences between matched siblings using a fixed-effects regression model. Additionally, we analyzed the binary outcomes of low birthweight (LBW) or very low birthweight (VLBW).”
All in all, the findings suggested that exposure to landscape fire smoke may be harmful to fetal health.
The study is said to be the first of its kind to report a link between low birth weight and exposure to landscape fire among low and middle-income nations.
