Smoking in pregnancy is linked to birth defects such as missing or deformed limbs, facial defects and gastrointestinal problems, a risk that should be included in public health warnings, a new review suggests.
Despite public health messages that warn of harm such as miscarriage and premature birth, an estimated 10.5 per cent of women in Canada and 17 per cent of women in the U.K. still smoke during pregnancy.
In this week's issue of the journal Human Reproduction Update, British researchers examined 172 research papers on birth defects associated with smoking.
The risk increased most for having a baby with a missing or deformed limb, club foot, gastrointestinal defects, skull defects, eye defects, and cleft lip or cleft palate, Prof. Allan Hackshaw of University College London Cancer Institute and his co-authors concluded.
The review found risks that were:
Few public health educational messages mention birth defects when referring to smoking, the researchers said.
"In conclusion, maternal smoking in pregnancy is an important risk factor for several major birth defects," the reviewers wrote. "These specific defects should be included in public health educational information to encourage more women to quit smoking before or early on in pregnancy, and to particularly target younger women and those from lower socioeconomic groups, in which smoking prevalence is greatest."
The authors also called for more research into whether the risk of lifelong physical abnormalities in a child might encourage more women to quit.
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