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Socioeconomic factors and low birth weight in Mexico

BACKGROUND: Low birth weight (LBW) is a public health problem linked to lack of equity in populations. Despite efforts to decrease the proportion of newborns with LBW, success has been quite limited. In recent years, studies focused on explaining how social factors influence this problem have shown...

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Autores principales: Torres-Arreola, Laura P, Constantino-Casas, Patricia, Flores-Hernández, Sergio, Villa-Barragán, Juan Pablo, Rendón-Macías, Enrique
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2005
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC554974/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15745443
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-5-20
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author Torres-Arreola, Laura P
Constantino-Casas, Patricia
Flores-Hernández, Sergio
Villa-Barragán, Juan Pablo
Rendón-Macías, Enrique
author_facet Torres-Arreola, Laura P
Constantino-Casas, Patricia
Flores-Hernández, Sergio
Villa-Barragán, Juan Pablo
Rendón-Macías, Enrique
author_sort Torres-Arreola, Laura P
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Low birth weight (LBW) is a public health problem linked to lack of equity in populations. Despite efforts to decrease the proportion of newborns with LBW, success has been quite limited. In recent years, studies focused on explaining how social factors influence this problem have shown that populations with greater inequities have a greater proportion of newborns with LBW. METHODS: The objective was to describe socioeconomic factors related to LBW adjusted by demographic, reproductive and health services variables in Mexico City. A case-control study was carried out in three hospitals with gynaecological and obstetrics services in Mexico City during the first half of 1996. During the recruiting period all children with LBW (cases), defined as newborns weighing <2500 grams, were matched with children born on the same day to control for time of birth. Upon arrival at the hospital for delivery, women were interviewed to determine if they met our inclusion criteria. Women with a history of chronic conditions and those with twin or multiple pregnancies were excluded. Variables with clinical and statistical significance were included in a multivariate model (logistic regression). RESULTS: We found that low socioeconomic level was the most important risk factor for LBW and was independent of other factors, including those related to reproduction and nutrition, smoking, morbidity during pregnancy, accessibility to health services and prenatal care (OR 2.68; 95% CI 1.19, 6.03). CONCLUSION: We found that socioeconomic factors are relevant to LBW. However further research should be done in different population groups as well as developing precise ways of measuring socioeconomic factors and their role in reproductive health.
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spelling pubmed-5549742005-03-20 Socioeconomic factors and low birth weight in Mexico Torres-Arreola, Laura P Constantino-Casas, Patricia Flores-Hernández, Sergio Villa-Barragán, Juan Pablo Rendón-Macías, Enrique BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: Low birth weight (LBW) is a public health problem linked to lack of equity in populations. Despite efforts to decrease the proportion of newborns with LBW, success has been quite limited. In recent years, studies focused on explaining how social factors influence this problem have shown that populations with greater inequities have a greater proportion of newborns with LBW. METHODS: The objective was to describe socioeconomic factors related to LBW adjusted by demographic, reproductive and health services variables in Mexico City. A case-control study was carried out in three hospitals with gynaecological and obstetrics services in Mexico City during the first half of 1996. During the recruiting period all children with LBW (cases), defined as newborns weighing <2500 grams, were matched with children born on the same day to control for time of birth. Upon arrival at the hospital for delivery, women were interviewed to determine if they met our inclusion criteria. Women with a history of chronic conditions and those with twin or multiple pregnancies were excluded. Variables with clinical and statistical significance were included in a multivariate model (logistic regression). RESULTS: We found that low socioeconomic level was the most important risk factor for LBW and was independent of other factors, including those related to reproduction and nutrition, smoking, morbidity during pregnancy, accessibility to health services and prenatal care (OR 2.68; 95% CI 1.19, 6.03). CONCLUSION: We found that socioeconomic factors are relevant to LBW. However further research should be done in different population groups as well as developing precise ways of measuring socioeconomic factors and their role in reproductive health. BioMed Central 2005-03-03 /pmc/articles/PMC554974/ /pubmed/15745443 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-5-20 Text en Copyright © 2005 Torres-Arreola et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Torres-Arreola, Laura P
Constantino-Casas, Patricia
Flores-Hernández, Sergio
Villa-Barragán, Juan Pablo
Rendón-Macías, Enrique
Socioeconomic factors and low birth weight in Mexico
title Socioeconomic factors and low birth weight in Mexico
title_full Socioeconomic factors and low birth weight in Mexico
title_fullStr Socioeconomic factors and low birth weight in Mexico
title_full_unstemmed Socioeconomic factors and low birth weight in Mexico
title_short Socioeconomic factors and low birth weight in Mexico
title_sort socioeconomic factors and low birth weight in mexico
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC554974/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15745443
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-5-20
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