Women Pregnancy

The study conducted by the Australian team at the University of Queensland included nearly 7,500 participants, 3,000 mothers and their children, claims that smoking during pregnancy substantially increases the risk of giving birth to babies who eventually turn into smokers. The researchers were interested in smoking habits of mothers during pregnancy and smoking patterns of offspring during adolescence. Children whose mothers smoked while pregnant were almost three times as likely to start smoking regularly at age 14.
Smoking patterns among children whose mothers stopped smoking while pregnant but then resumed the habit were similar to those whose mothers had never smoked, according to the study published in the British Medical Journal ahead of publication in Tobacco Control.

Children of the 1,000 women who had smoked during pregnancy were three times more likely to start smoking by the age of 14 and twice as likely afterwards compared to other children. The researchers said their results were consistent with findings of earlier studies into the impact of smoking during pregnancy on the child. “This shows that smoking specifically during this time will do the most damage,” said lead author Abdullah Al Mamun of the University of Queensland.
“It is some of the first evidence that this behaviour has a direct effect, not an indirect effect, on the child’s chances of becoming a smoker.”
Researchers are hoping that the findings of their study will determine expecting mothers to give up smoking for at least nine months, until the baby is brought into the world.

Nick Zwar, professor of general practice at the University of NSW, said that as more harm was seen in heavy smokers, “you would think that if heavy smokers cut down, they would have lesser risks”.
“But that doesn’t seem to be the case,” he said.
However, Professor Zwar said the Australian study had to be treated with some caution, because it was possible there were other hidden factors associated with women who smoked in pregnancy that could be causing the children to smoke, rather than the mother’s behaviour.