Fewer Baby Boys Caused By Early Pregnancy Stress

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According to a new study, stress during the early pregnancy can decrease a woman’s chances of delivering a baby boy and increases the risk for her to deliver her baby prematurely.

On the investigation that has been done with pregnant women in Chile who were affected by a major earthquake that occurred in 2005, it showed that pregnancy can be affected by stress per se rather than the other factors that often goes with or results to stress, such as poverty, according to the researchers.

The investigators studied the birth certificates of all the babies born between 2004 and 2006 in Chile, which reached more than 200,000 per year.  The birth records showed pertinent information regarding the babies and their mothers, which includes the proximity of the mothers’ residences to the epicenter of the earthquake with a magnitude of 7.9.

On the December 8 issue of Human Reproduction, the study authors reported that reduced ratio of male to female births were seen on third month pregnancies that were exposed to the earthquake.

“Generally, there are more male than female live births. The ratio of male to female births is approximately 51:49 — in other words, out of every 100 births, 51 will be boys. Our findings indicate a 5.8 percent decline in this proportion, which would translate into a ratio of 45 male births per 100 births, so that there are now more female than male births. This is a significant change for this type of measure,” Dr. KarineKleinhaus, an assistant professor of psychiatry, obstetrics & gynecology, and environmental medicine at New York University, said in a journal news release.

The findings of the new study may be related to a previous one, which has found that male fetuses are more likely to be miscarried in times of stress compared to female fetuses since they grow larger and need more resources from their mothers. Also, male fetuses have been found to be less active and may be less adaptive in developing to a stressful environment inside of the mothers’ womb compared to female fetuses.

The study also showed that women who were exposed to the earthquake during their second and third month of pregnancy had shorter pregnancies and were more likely to deliver their babies prematurely. In comparison with the women in Chile who were not affected by the earthquake, the pregnancies of the women who were exposed to the earthquake in their second month of pregnancy were 1.3 days shorter in average, and the pregnancies of those who were exposed to the earthquake in their third month of pregnancy were 2 days shorter in average, according to the findings of the study.

In 100 women exposed to the earthquake in their third month of their pregnancy, more than nine had a premature baby, a 3.4 percent increase compared to the normal rate of only about six in 100. The most notable effects were seen among baby girls – close to a 4 percent increase in number of premature births if the exposure to the earthquake occurred during the second month of pregnancy and a 3.8 percent increase if the exposure occurred during the third month.

The researchers noted, however, that exposure to earthquake had no statistically significant effect on the risk of delivering a premature baby boy.

Source: Stress Early in Pregnancy Linked to Fewer Baby Boys

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