25/06/2012
UNITY HEALTH AWARENESS FACTS -
Children Age 14 Still Show Harmful Effects
if Mothers Smoked During Pregnancy
SOURCE: Department of Public Health, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland
Several thousand 14 year old children were included in a follow up study which found more health and academic problems among the children whose mothers smoked during pregnancy. This large study was conducted by the Department of Public Health, University of Oulu, Finland.
The study began with an assessment of 12,068 pregnant mothers in two northern provinces in Finland. A questionnaire given to the 12,000+ women showed 19.7% of the mothers smoked at the beginning of pregnancy. However, by the second month of pregnancy, 15.5% of the mothers were smoking for a total of 1,819 women. It was of these 1,819 women that the study of health and academic performance was conducted.
At the end of 1980 and early 1981, 11,780 of the original children (now age 14) were located for the follow up study. The questionnaire inquired on the children’s health, growth, school performance, various habits (smoking, drinking, participation in sports) and family conditions including father’s smoking history.
RESULTS
On the positive side, there were no significant differences between the groups in respect to "severe" mental retardation, diabetes, rheumatic diseases or other long term diseases, according to the questionnaire sent to the families or from information received from the school or national registers.
Asthma proportion was similar in both groups, about 2.1% of cases, however, the children of smokers did have over a 50% higher chance of being administered to the hospital for severe asthma reactions, 1.30% compared to .80% for the non-smokers.
In conclusion the researchers stated,
"School performance of the smokers’ children was poorer than that of their controls when measured in terms of their mean ability on theoretical subjects and scored from 4 to 10 on the child’s school report, this trend being seen among both the boys and the girls and in all social classes The children of the smokers were more prone to respiratory diseases than the others. They were also shorter in length by nearly 1 centimeter (a little less than a half an inch) and their mean ability at school was poorer than among the controls for mothers who smoked 10 ci******es and 20 ci******es per day. The differences remained significant after adjusting for the mother’s height and age, social class as determined by the father’s occupation, number of older and younger children in the family and the s*x of the child."
