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By Jocelyn Wiener
(Reuters Health) – Potential fathers may increase their partner's risk of miscarriage by smoking during pregnancy, or even in the pre-conception period, suggests a large study in China.
According to data from nearly 6 million pregnancies, researchers found that women whose partners smoked during the first months of pregnancy were 17% more likely to miscarry than women. non smokers.
Women whose partners quit at the time of conception had a 18% lower risk of miscarriage than women whose partners did not stop smoking, reports the team. from the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.
"Although we know for a long time that if the mother smokes, there is an increased risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes, fathers who smoke also influence the" success "of pregnancy," Dr. Alison Holloway, who was not involved in the study, said in an e-mail.
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The size of the study is particularly noteworthy, said Holloway, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
The authors collected data from nearly 5.8 million non-smoking women aged 18-49 and their husbands in rural China. Couples participated in a free national pre-pregnancy health check project from 2010 to 2016. The service included three steps: a pre-conception health check, early pregnancy monitoring within three months of conception, and follow-up. of pregnancy. about a year after the examination of early pregnancy.
About 29 percent of male partners were smokers, and the overall miscarriage rate was about 2.5 percent.
When the male partner was a non-smoker, however, the miscarriage rate was 2.38%, compared to 2.92% when the male partner smoked.
When the potential father quit smoking before or just after conception, the miscarriage rate was 2.79%, compared to 3.35% when the father did not quit.
"The importance of tobacco control, especially with respect to paternal smoking, needs to be emphasized, and husbands should quit smoking when planning a pregnancy," write the authors of the ################################################################################## 39, study, many of which work for the National Institute of Chinese Research. Family Planning in Beijing, and who did not respond to requests for comments.
While the authors have identified an badociation between male partner smoking and miscarriage, the study does not prove that one has caused the other. He also did not examine the mechanisms by which paternal smoking could influence pregnancy loss.
There are at least two possible ways for a husband to smoke to influence a miscarriage, Holloway said. A smoking husband may expose his wife to chemicals through second-hand smoke and second-hand smoke – that is, smoke deposits on clothes, furniture, carpets, etc. to pregnancy loss.
"Although they have addressed the impact of paternal smoking, you still can not determine how daddy's smoking behavior impacts the risk of miscarriage," she said. at Reuters Health.
The impossibility of demonstrating causality is one of the major limitations of the study, Dr. Zev Williams, head of the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and the I & # 39; 39, Infertility at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, in an email. He also noted that the study was limited by its reliance on patient memory and did not measure the actual levels of many toxins produced by smoking.
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Williams, who was not involved in the study, described pregnancy as "a precious but precarious thing".
It is "very important to try to optimize all the factors that can contribute to a healthy pregnancy," he noted. "Although the focus has been on the health of the mother, this study highlights the importance of her environment and the partner's contribution to the health of the pregnancy."
SOURCE: https://bit.ly/2MtnwC7 Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, online June 11, 2018.
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