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| image credit: military.com |
"Female soldiers who give birth within six months of returning from military deployment face twice the risk of having a preterm baby as other active-duty servicewomen, a new study from the Stanford University School of Medicine has found.
The study, which examined 12,877 births to American soldiers from 2011-14, will be published online March 1 in the American Journal of Epidemiology. In total, 6.1 percent of births studied were premature, meaning the baby was born three or more weeks early. But among women who had recently returned from deployment, 11.7 percent of deliveries were premature. Women giving birth soon after deployment were, on average, younger than other military mothers, and with lower education and lower pay, the study found.
"What's important is the timing of deployment," said lead author Jonathan Shaw, MD, clinical assistant professor of medicine at Stanford. "Pregnancies that overlapped with deployment or the period of returning home were much more likely to end in preterm birth, which has impacts not only on the health of the infant, but also on the mother and family."
Premature birth can cause problems for the infant's vision, hearing, breathing and digestion, as well as lifelong developmental and learning disabilities. Families face financial and caregiving burdens associated with meeting the child's needs.
Shaw and his colleagues used the Stanford Military Data Repository, which contains de-identified medical and administrative data on United States Army soldiers. They identified pregnant servicewomen in the database for whom at least a year of medical data prior to the birth was available. The study examined only spontaneous premature birth, excluding early deliveries that were planned by physicians to preserve the health of the mother or infant.
"This database allows us to explore the universal issue of healthy mothers and babies, and also the pragmatic issue of how scientific insights can support our servicewomen and contribute to military readiness," said Lianne Kurina, PhD, associate professor of medicine at Stanford and senior author of the study..."
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The study, which examined 12,877 births to American soldiers from 2011-14, will be published online March 1 in the American Journal of Epidemiology. In total, 6.1 percent of births studied were premature, meaning the baby was born three or more weeks early. But among women who had recently returned from deployment, 11.7 percent of deliveries were premature. Women giving birth soon after deployment were, on average, younger than other military mothers, and with lower education and lower pay, the study found.
"What's important is the timing of deployment," said lead author Jonathan Shaw, MD, clinical assistant professor of medicine at Stanford. "Pregnancies that overlapped with deployment or the period of returning home were much more likely to end in preterm birth, which has impacts not only on the health of the infant, but also on the mother and family."
Premature birth can cause problems for the infant's vision, hearing, breathing and digestion, as well as lifelong developmental and learning disabilities. Families face financial and caregiving burdens associated with meeting the child's needs.
Shaw and his colleagues used the Stanford Military Data Repository, which contains de-identified medical and administrative data on United States Army soldiers. They identified pregnant servicewomen in the database for whom at least a year of medical data prior to the birth was available. The study examined only spontaneous premature birth, excluding early deliveries that were planned by physicians to preserve the health of the mother or infant.
"This database allows us to explore the universal issue of healthy mothers and babies, and also the pragmatic issue of how scientific insights can support our servicewomen and contribute to military readiness," said Lianne Kurina, PhD, associate professor of medicine at Stanford and senior author of the study..."
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