Researchers in the Prenatal Alcohol in SIDS and Stillbirth (PASS) Network found that smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol past the first trimester of pregnancy was associated with 2.78 times the risk of late stillbirth, defined as a fetal death delivered at 28 or more weeks, compared to those who neither smoked nor drank or stopped both before the end of the first trimester.
Women who reported that they did not drink or smoke or had quit before the end of the first trimester of pregnancy had a risk of stillbirth of 4 per 1000 pregnancies. That number increased to 15 per 1000 pregnancies when women continued to drink and smoke beyond the first trimester.
The researchers also confirmed what earlier studies had suggested, that pregnant women who continued to drink alcohol after the first trimester had a higher risk of stillbirth.
The prospective, longitudinal study involved a total of 11,892 pregnancies in 8,506 women aged 16 and older from South Africa, and South and North Dakota between Aug. 1, 2007, and Jan. 31, 2015.
The ethnicities of the participants were 59 percent multiracial, 23 percent white, 17 percent American Indian, two percent Hispanic, and 0.9 percent other. In South Africa, multiracial was “defined as having ancestry from more than one of the populations that inhabit the region.”
About half of all stillbirths occurred in six countries before the pandemic: China, India, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Access to quality health care during pregnancy and labor can prevent many stillbirths, with almost half occurring after labor begins.
“Over 40 percent of all stillbirths occur during labor—a loss that could be avoided with improved monitoring and timely access to emergency obstetric care when required,” the report said.
The incidence of stillbirths increased in several areas during the pandemic. Due to the lockdown, pregnant women didn’t go in for their routine prenatal checkup, which would have diagnosed any complications that could lead to stillbirth.
