Women exposed to extreme cold or hot temperatures during pregnancy are more likely to deliver a baby at term below normal birth rate, according to a recent study published in the journal Environmental Research.
For the study, researchers examined medical records from 223,375 births at 12 U.S. clinical centers and compared the information with temperature records for each center's geographical region. Researchers defined extreme cold as temperatures falling below the 10th percentile of average temperatures for the area and extreme heat as temperatures above the 90th percentile.
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Mothers exposed to extreme cold during the second or third trimester were 18 to 21 percent more likely to deliver a baby less than 5.5 pounds at term. When exposed to extended cold over the entire pregnancy, infants were 257 percent more likely to be born underweight. Expectant mothers exposed to heat in the third trimester were 31 percent more likely to be of low birth weight, and infants born to mothers who lived in regions experiencing atypically hot temperatures for the entirety of the pregnancy were 249 percent more likely to be born below birth rate.
"Until we can learn more, it makes sense to reduce the amount of time that pregnant women are exposed to extreme hot or cold weather," said Pauline Mendola, PhD, the study's senior author and an epidemiologist at the National Institutes of Health's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
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