The conclusion belongs to a new study

Jun 26, 2009 08:48 GMT  ·  By

According to a new report published in the June issue of the Journal of Women's Health, women who are depressive during pregnancy run a risk of giving birth prematurely. The paper also reveals that Black patients have twice as high chances of delivering babies before nine months than White patients, although the reasons for this difference are not yet fully understood.

University of Washington in Seattle expert Dr. Amelia R. Gavin told Reuters Health that, “The black-white disparity in preterm birth may be in part a consequence of different exposures to depressive mood prior to pregnancy.” The conclusion comes on a very unclear background, as studies have determined before that this type of association does not exist.

However, Gavin and her colleagues used massive amounts of data, collected between 1990 and 1996, as part of a massive investigation on heart disease risks in the general population. All of the 555 women that were a part of the new research participated in the earlier investigation, and all were over 24 years old when they first gave birth to their children. The team thus managed to find a connection between race, premature birth, and before-pregnancy depressive moods.

“Reproductive outcomes must be viewed in light of women's health over the entire life-course, as well as during pregnancy,” the researcher explained, talking about the fact that patients shouldn't think they did not run the risk of delivering prematurely just because they were healthy during the pregnancy. “The experience of cumulative health disadvantages or 'weathering',” also played an important part in the overall outcome, Gavin further said.

In the experiments, the scientists noted that, out of the 249 Black women, about 18 percent of them gave birth before 37 weeks of gestation. Only 8.5 percent of the 306 White women did the same, the study reports. Additionally, some 9.4 percent of Black women suffered from pre-pregnancy depressive moods, as opposed to the 7.2 percentage in Whites. As far as depression scores go, The Black women also ranked higher, 13 percent versus 9.5 percent in White female participants.