Pacific Island women smoking while pregnant

Media release

Tuesday 30 January, 2007

Pacific Island women smoking while pregnant

A significant number of Pacific Island mothers in New Zealand are smoking during pregnancy, an AUT University study has found.

In a paper recently published in The New Zealand Medical Journal, AUT researchers discovered approximately 20% of surveyed Pacific Island mothers living in New Zealand reported smoking during their last trimester of pregnancy, with significant associated health problems.

Overall, smoking prevalence among Pacific Island women is higher - in 2002 the Ministry of Health reported 28.5% smoked compared with 25.5% of all New Zealand women.

The paper's findings are part of the Pacific Islands Families (PIF) study being carried out by AUT researchers. The PIF study is the first longitudinal study into the health and wellbeing of Pacific Islanders. It has been following 1398 infants and their mothers for the past six years.

Associate Professor Janis Paterson, who is co-director of the PIF study, says their research found that smokers are at least twice as likely to have maternal asthma and an infant with a low birth weight as non-smokers.

"Mothers who smoked one to nine cigarettes daily had more than twice the risk of having asthma, while mothers who smoked more than 10 daily had almost five times the risk," she says.

The results show a significant trend of decreasing birth weight with increasing smoking dose. On average, infants born to light-to-moderate smokers weighed 243.5 grams less and infants born to heavy smokers weighed 277.7 grams less than infants born to non-smokers.

Other research released by the PIF study in 2006 looked at health problems among the six-week old infants and found that 43% were related to breathing difficulties. One of the significant factors associated with this was maternal cigarette smoking during the last trimester.

"Smoking is preventable, yet continues to have negative consequences for mothers and their offspring," says Assoc. Prof. Paterson. "These findings are useful for future public health policy and smoking cessation programmes for Pacific Island families.

"The PIF study is focused on the key developmental stages of childhood and the influence of the socio-cultural context and family environment on Pacific children. It also has an emphasis on increasing the research capacity of Pacific people," she says.

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