Mourning Is Linked to Early DeliveryOmaha World-Herald - October 8, 2001
Victims of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington may include an unexpected group: fetuses carried by American women who watched the attacks unfold. To examine the effects of communal bereavement, researchers charted birth weights in Sweden after the 1986 murder of the prime minister and a 1994 sea storm that sank a ferry and killed more than 900 people. Premature births of infants weighing 3.3 pounds or less increased 21 percent after the assassination and 15 percent after the ferry disaster. Many babies that small die, noted Ralph Catalano of the University of California at Berkeley. His study is to appear in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior and was reported by the Washington Post. Catalano linked the early births to the mothers' high levels of the stress hormone cortisol. But an Omaha doctor who specializes in high-risk pregnancies said it's not clear that stress triggers preterm labor. "We see women whose family members die while they're pregnant. Some women are in car wrecks," said Dr. Andrew Robertson, a perinatologist at Methodist Hospital. "The vast majority do not deliver early and do not deliver small babies." Robertson and colleagues deliver about 150 babies a year who weigh 3.3 pounds or less. He hasn't seen an upswing since the terrorist attacks. If premature births increase, he said, it's more likely to happen in New York or Washington. |