163 EPIDEMIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE PREMATURITY RISK FACTORS

Abstract

By means of complete registration applied in 9 hospitals of Southern Poland from May 1, 1989 through December 31, 1989 - 413 premature infants and 2919 control babies were ascertained. The study represents an attempt to identify prematurity risk factors and evaluate the degree of their contribution to the etiology of preterm delivery.

Results: the overall incidence of prematurity was 4.4% (range: 3.1 -6.0%). The analyses performed by chi2 method revealed significant associations between prematurity occurrence and: increased number of miscarriages (MSC) (p = .0002); lower menarche age (MA) (p = .031), lower maternal education (BD) (p = .01), illegitimacy (IL) (p = .001), standing position at work (p = 4.24E-5). Possible interactions between the above mentioned risk factors were tested by Chi-Log analysis. The best goodness of fit (p = 0.867) between the observed and expected distributions of premature deliveries was found for three factors: IL, ED, MSC with significant contributions of the following interactions: IL:MSC, IL:ED. It was found that mothers of preterm babies weighted significantly less in comparison to the mothers of controls (p = .0009). No such relationship was observed for maternal height. An additional analysis was focused on familial occurrence of preterm deliveries. It was shown that incidence of prematurity among the probands' sibs was markedly higher compared to the sibs of term controls (p = 4.4E-13).

Conclusion: The results suggest multifactorial etiology of prematurity with the involvement of environmental, maternal and possibly genetic factors.

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