IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0061734.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Revisiting the Effect of Maternal Smoking during Pregnancy on Offspring Birthweight: A Quasi-Experimental Sibling Analysis in Sweden

Author

Listed:
  • Sol Pía Juárez
  • Juan Merlo

Abstract

Maternal smoking during pregnancy (SDP) seems associated with reduced birthweight in the offspring. This observation, however, is based on conventional epidemiological analyses, and it might be confounded by unobserved maternal characteristics related to both smoking habits and offspring birth weight. Therefore, we apply a quasi-experimental sibling analysis to revisit previous findings. Using the Swedish Medical Birth Register, we identified 677,922 singletons born between 2002 and 2010 from native Swedish mothers. From this population, we isolated 62,941 siblings from 28,768 mothers with discrepant habits of SDP. We applied conventional and mother-specific multilevel linear regression models to investigate the association between maternal SDP and offspring birthweight. Depending on the mother was light or heavy smoker and the timing of exposition during pregnancy (i.e., first or third trimester), the effect of smoking on birthweight reduction was between 6 and 78 g less marked in the sibling analysis than in the conventional analysis. Sibling analysis showed that continuous smoking reduces birthweight by 162 grams for mothers who were light smokers (1 to 9 cigarettes per day) and 226 g on average for those who were heavy smokers throughout the pregnancy in comparison to non-smoker mothers. Quitting smoking during pregnancy partly counteracted the smoking-related birthweight reduction by 1 to 29 g, and a subsequent smoking relapse during pregnancy reduced birthweight by 77 to 83 g. The sibling analysis provides strong evidence that maternal SDP reduces offspring birthweight, though this reduction was not as great as that observed in the conventional analysis. Our findings support public health interventions aimed to prevent SDP and to persuade those who already smoke to quit and not relapse throughout the pregnancy. Besides, further analyses are needed in order to explain the mechanisms through which smoking reduces birthweight and to identify other maternal characteristics that are common causes of both birthweight reduction and maternal smoking.

Suggested Citation

  • Sol Pía Juárez & Juan Merlo, 2013. "Revisiting the Effect of Maternal Smoking during Pregnancy on Offspring Birthweight: A Quasi-Experimental Sibling Analysis in Sweden," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(4), pages 1-7, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0061734
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0061734
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0061734
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0061734&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0061734?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kahn, R.S. & Certain, L. & Whitaker, R.C., 2002. "A reexamination of smoking before, during, and after pregnancy," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 92(11), pages 1801-1808.
    2. Shiono, P.H. & Rauh, V.A. & Park, M. & Lederman, S.A. & Zuskar, D., 1997. "Ethnic differences in birthweight: The role of lifestyle and other factors," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 87(5), pages 787-793.
    3. William J. Browne & Fiona Steele & Mousa Golalizadeh & Martin J. Green, 2009. "The use of simple reparameterizations to improve the efficiency of Markov chain Monte Carlo estimation for multilevel models with applications to discrete time survival models," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 172(3), pages 579-598, June.
    4. Merlo, Juan & Ohlsson, Henrik & Chaix, Basile & Lichtenstein, Paul & Kawachi, Ichiro & Subramanian, S.V., 2013. "Revisiting causal neighborhood effects on individual ischemic heart disease risk: A quasi-experimental multilevel analysis among Swedish siblings," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 39-46.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jeffrey E. Harris & Ana Balsa & Patricia Triunfo, 2014. "Campaña antitabaco en Uruguay:Impacto en la decisión de dejar de fumar durante el embarazo y en el peso al nacer," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 0114, Department of Economics - dECON.
    2. Aurélie Nakamura & Olivier François & Johanna Lepeule, 2021. "Epigenetic Alterations of Maternal Tobacco Smoking during Pregnancy: A Narrative Review," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(10), pages 1-19, May.
    3. Jeffrey E. Harris & Ana Inés Balsa & Patricia Triunfo, 2014. "Tobacco Control Campaign in Uruguay: Impact on Smoking Cessation during Pregnancy," NBER Working Papers 19878, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Pramesh Raj Ghimire & Julie Mooney & Louise Fox & Lorraine Dubois, 2021. "Smoking Cessation during the Second Half of Pregnancy Prevents Low Birth Weight among Australian Born Babies in Regional New South Wales," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(7), pages 1-14, March.
    5. Leah K. Lakdawala & David Simon, 2016. "The Intergenerational Consequences of Tobacco Policy," Working papers 2016-27, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    6. Hajdu, Tamás & Hajdu, Gábor, 2018. "Smoking ban and health at birth: Evidence from Hungary," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 37-47.
    7. Harris, Jeffrey E. & Balsa, Ana Inés & Triunfo, Patricia, 2015. "Tobacco control campaign in Uruguay: Impact on smoking cessation during pregnancy and birth weight," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 186-196.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sol Pía Juárez & Juan Merlo, 2013. "The Effect of Swedish Snuff (Snus) on Offspring Birthweight: A Sibling Analysis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(6), pages 1-6, June.
    2. Bellelli, Francesco S. & Scarpa, Riccardo & Aftab, Ashar, 2023. "An empirical analysis of participation in international environmental agreements," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    3. Plewis Ian & Shlomo Natalie, 2017. "Using Response Propensity Models to Improve the Quality of Response Data in Longitudinal Studies," Journal of Official Statistics, Sciendo, vol. 33(3), pages 753-779, September.
    4. Görlitz, Katja & Tamm, Marcus, 2020. "Parenthood and smoking," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 38(C).
    5. Petra Rattay & Elena von der Lippe, 2020. "Association between Living with Children and the Health and Health Behavior of Women and Men. Are There Differences by Age? Results of the “German Health Update” (GEDA) Study," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(9), pages 1-19, May.
    6. Daniel Kim & Adrianna Saada, 2013. "The Social Determinants of Infant Mortality and Birth Outcomes in Western Developed Nations: A Cross-Country Systematic Review," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 10(6), pages 1-40, June.
    7. Bagnara, Maurizio & Van Oijen, Marcel & Cameron, David & Gianelle, Damiano & Magnani, Federico & Sottocornola, Matteo, 2018. "Bayesian calibration of simple forest models with multiplicative mathematical structure: A case study with two Light Use Efficiency models in an alpine forest," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 371(C), pages 90-100.
    8. Yang, Tse-Chuan & Shoff, Carla & Noah, Aggie J. & Black, Nyesha & Sparks, Corey S., 2014. "Racial segregation and maternal smoking during pregnancy: A multilevel analysis using the racial segregation interaction index," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 26-36.
    9. Anders Larrabee Sonderlund & Antoinette Schoenthaler & Trine Thilsing, 2021. "The Association between Maternal Experiences of Interpersonal Discrimination and Adverse Birth Outcomes: A Systematic Review of the Evidence," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(4), pages 1-31, February.
    10. Damien Bricard & Stéphane Legleye & Myriam Khlat, 2017. "Changes in Smoking Behavior over Family Transitions: Evidence for Anticipation and Adaptation Effects," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 14(6), pages 1-10, June.
    11. Oedekoven, C.S. & King, R. & Buckland, S.T. & Mackenzie, M.L. & Evans, K.O. & Burger, L.W., 2016. "Using hierarchical centering to facilitate a reversible jump MCMC algorithm for random effects models," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 79-90.
    12. Baghishani, Hossein & Mohammadzadeh, Mohsen, 2011. "A data cloning algorithm for computing maximum likelihood estimates in spatial generalized linear mixed models," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 55(4), pages 1748-1759, April.
    13. Graham, Hilary & Hawkins, Summer Sherburne & Law, Catherine, 2010. "Lifecourse influences on women's smoking before, during and after pregnancy," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 70(4), pages 582-587, February.
    14. Manley, David & van Ham, Maarten & Hedman, Lina, 2018. "Experienced and Inherited Disadvantage: A Longitudinal Study of Early Adulthood Neighbourhood Careers of Siblings," IZA Discussion Papers 11335, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Hee-Koung Joeng & Ming-Hui Chen & Sangwook Kang, 2016. "Proportional exponentiated link transformed hazards (ELTH) models for discrete time survival data with application," Lifetime Data Analysis: An International Journal Devoted to Statistical Methods and Applications for Time-to-Event Data, Springer, vol. 22(1), pages 38-62, January.
    16. Juan Merlo & Philippe Wagner & Nermin Ghith & George Leckie, 2016. "An Original Stepwise Multilevel Logistic Regression Analysis of Discriminatory Accuracy: The Case of Neighbourhoods and Health," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(4), pages 1-31, April.
    17. Hedman, Lina & Manley, David & van Ham, Maarten, 2017. "Sorting out Neighbourhood Effects Using Sibling Data," IZA Discussion Papers 11178, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. George Leckie & Rebecca Pillinger & Kelvyn Jones & Harvey Goldstein, 2012. "Multilevel Modeling of Social Segregation," Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, , vol. 37(1), pages 3-30, February.
    19. Homish, Gregory G. & Leonard, Kenneth E., 2005. "Spousal influence on smoking behaviors in a US community sample of newly married couples," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 61(12), pages 2557-2567, December.
    20. Madsen, Mia & Andersen, Per K. & Gerster, Mette & Andersen, Anne-Marie N. & Christensen, Kaare & Osler, Merete, 2014. "Are the educational differences in incidence of cardiovascular disease explained by underlying familial factors? A twin study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 182-190.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0061734. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.