Prematurity

Infant mortality has dramatically regressed over the last tenths of years.
Meanwhile, prematurity is on the rise.
A negative correlation is documented between prematurity and family income, between prematurity and education level. There is a documented positive correlation between prematurity and anemia, cardiomyopathy, hypertension, infectious disease, genital infection, uterine abnormalities, premature rupture of membranes, and twin pregnancy.

Introduction

While monitoring pregnancies and delivering babies -- I was educated as an OB-GYN. and practiced that specialty during 30 years in Antwerp, Belgium -- I was asking myself. if there could be a link between the nutritional condition of the mother and the term of her pregnancy, more precisely if nutritional deficiencies before and during pregnancy could be added to the factors with a positive correlation to prematurity.
Since most women in my practice were taking supplements during their pregnancy and that some of them still had premature babies, I was particularly interested in finding out if supplementing before pregnancy would help reduce the occurrence of prematurity.
It was impossible to ask volunteers to take supplements during a certain period of time and then -- just then -- to start a pregnancy.
Very fortunately, there was a way around. I had for years been adding minerals and vitamins to my prescriptions for all kind of health conditions, ranging from fatigue and depression to amenorrhea, PMS, and sterility.
Some of the patients following these prescriptions happened to become pregnant during their treatment. All I had to do was to ask them to stick to the treatment during the pregnancy.

Treated and Untreated Pregnancies

35 Treated Pregnancies The chart at the top of figure 1 indicates the outcome of 35 pregnancies in women that were taking minerals and vitamin supplements during a period of time of at least three months before becoming pregnant. Figure 1, top : The horizontal line indicates the duration of the pregnancy expressed in weeks. 31 deliveries occurred after 40 weeks pregnancy, and 4 deliveries after 39 weeks. The vertical line indicates the weight in pounds of the babies at birth. There are no premature infants. Two babies are underweight. 35 Untreated Pregnancies The chart at the bottom of the figure 1 indicates the outcome of 35 pregnancies in women that were not taking minerals and vitamin supplements before becoming pregnant. Figure 1, bottom : The horizontal line indicates the duration of the pregnancy expressed in weeks. In contrast to the first group, in the control group there are 4 deliveries after 39 weeks, 5 after 38 weeks, 1 after 34 weeks, and 3 after 41 weeks. The vertical line indicates the weight in pounds of the babies at birth. 5 babies are underweight.

The Selection of the Control Group
A few words about the selection of the control group.
For the control group, I selected the files of each patient giving birth immediately after the delivery of a patient from the first group.

Most if not all the patients of the control group had been taking supplements during their pregnancy. It is important to notice that they had started to take supplements only after knowing they were pregnant and did not take supplement before, in contrast to the patients of the first group.

More Interesting Information More interesting is the fact that in the group of the 35 prepared pregnancies, there were 19 women that already had children. Together the 19 mothers had 24 children born from a previous unprepared pregnancy. The chart on the top of the figure 2 indicates the outcome of the 19 prepared pregnancies. Figure 2, top : The horizontal line indicates the duration of the pregnancy expressed in weeks. 16 deliveries occurred after 40 weeks pregnancy, and 3 deliveries after 39 weeks. The vertical line indicates the weight in pounds of the babies at birth. There are no premature nor underweight newborns. The chart on the bottom of the figure 2 indicates the outcome of the 24 unprepared previous pregnancies, from the same mothers. Figure 2, bottom : The horizontal line indicates the duration of the pregnancy expressed in weeks. The deliveries occurred after 41 weeks pregnancy, 13 deliveries occurred after 40 weeks pregnancy, 3 after 39 weeks, and 5 after 38 weeks. The vertical line indicates the weight in pounds of the babies at birth. There are 3 underweight newborns.

I have to add that all the 19 mothers that had children of previous unprepared pregnancies, have noticed that their last baby -- the one from the prepared pregnancy -- was in better condition than the sibling or the siblings.

Babies from well prepared pregnancies

are easier to handle.

They eat better,

sleep better,

and have less health problems.

Publications on the Topic

Older Publications
The above results were the subject of a publication at the 8the International Congress of Perinatalogy held in Aachen, Germany, in 1984.
At that time, there were only two publications in the medical literature to strengthen the hypothesis of a link between the nutritional condition of the mother before and during pregnancy and prematurity.
One paper published by Deckers in 1977 describes thyroid hormone defect in premature babies and a paper published by Blumenthal in 1980 assumes that premature babies present a copper deficiency.
165 other papers about prematurity published around that same period of time only focuses on the diseases occurring in premature infants with no indication of any deficiency.

More Recent Publications
At the time of the first edition of this page there were more publications describing deficiencies in premature babies.
Deficiency in Iodine (Rooman, 1996) (Krassas, 2000) , Iron (Yeo, 2001) (Bader, 2001), vit B12 and folate (Rosenblatt, 1999), selenium (Winterbourn, 2000), magnesium (Villar 1998), copper (Beshgetoor, 1998), and calcium (Bakstroom, 2000), in premature newborn are the subject of recently published papers.

Today In The News

Today we have two large studies, both published in the Lancet confirming the initial lecture 24 years ago of the usefulness of supplements, minerals and vitamins to avoid prematurity and intra-uterine growth retardation.