Smoking ban reduced pregnancy complications, says study

The introduction of the ban on smoking in public places in Scotland resulted in a decrease in preterm delivery in pregnancy and small for gestational age rates, according to a new study. The research, led by Professor Jill Pell in the Institute of Health & Wellbeing at the University of Glasgow, and published in PLoS Medicine , looked at statistics for preterm delivery and gestational age in 716,941single-baby births before and after the introduction of the smoking legislation on 26 March 2006. The researchers found that following the introduction of the smoking ban the number of mothers who smoked fell from 25.4% to 18. There was also a drop of more than 10% in overall preterm deliveries, a 5% drop in the number of infants born small for gestational size, and a drop in 8% of babies born very small for gestational size. Pell said: "These findings add to the growing evidence of the wide-ranging health benefits of smoke-free legislation and support the adoption of such legislation in other countries which have yet to implement smoking bans. These reductions occurred both in mothers who smoked and those who had never smoked. "While survival rates for preterm deliveries have improved over the years, infants are still at risk of developing long-term health problems so any intervention that can reduce the risk of preterm delivery has the potential to produce important public health benefits." The researchers looked at data for babies born between January 1996 and December 2009 extracted from the Scottish Morbidity Record (SMR2) which collected information on all women discharged from Scottish maternity hospitals, including maternal and infant characteristics, obstetric history, clinical management and pregnancy complications.