Maternal nutritional status and adolescent pregnancy outcome

Abstract

To investigate the determinants of low birth weight of infants born to adolescent mothers, we studied the obstetric population attended at the Maternity Hospital of Lima, Peru. From this population we selected for study a sample of 1256 adolescent mothers ranging in age from 12 to 25 yr. The study included anthropometric and biochemical measurements used to evaluate nutritional status and physiological maturity of the mother and newborn. Findings from the present research indicate that the low birth weight of infants born to adolescent mothers is not due to premature delivery (short gestation) or low gynecological maturity. Furthermore, young adolescent mothers had smaller and thinner newborns than those born to older women who were adjusted for nutritional status during pregnancy and at delivery. That is, despite the similar nutritional status among the young adolescent mothers, the availability of nutrients for the accumulation of calories in the fetus (measured by skinfold thickness) was less than that of older women. Furthermore, the pregnancy weight gain associated with an optimal or average newborn weight is greater for young teenagers than for older women. These findings support the hypothesis that among rapidly growing teenagers the nutritional requirements of pregnancy may be greater than those of older women, and that this increased requirement competes with the growth needs of the fetus.

Prepregnancy Low Body Mass Index Is Not a Predictor of Labor Complications

“…Some in vestigations of underweight in obstetrics have been done in underdeveloped countries or among the lowest social class in the industrialized countries [4], where at least some women are undernourished as well as underweight for height. Thereby, they are not comparable to the women in this study, who are low weight for height but not undernourished.…”

Contributions of A. Roberto Frisancho to human population biology: An introduction

“…In the 1970s and early-1980s, Roberto collaborated with colleagues at the Maternity Hospital in Lima to study the nutritional and developmental determinants of low-birth weight infants (Frisancho et al, 1977(Frisancho et al, , 1983(Frisancho et al, , 1984b(Frisancho et al, ,c, 1985. This work highlighted the important role that maternal nutritional status has on the trajectory of a child's prenatal and postnatal growth.…”

Dynamic and static measures of growth among pre‐ and postmenarcheal females in rural Bangladesh

“…On average, the onset of the adolescent growth spurt occurs between 10.5 and 13 years in European girls (Frisch, 1972;Marshall and Tanner, 1979). Chronic undernutrition slows height velocity during childhood and adolescence and prolongs the period of growth (Malcolm, 1979;Frisancho et al, 1983). In the Asai and Bundi tribes of New Guinea, for example, males continue to grow well into their twenties, while European males cease to grow at about 18 years of age (Malcolm, 1970).…”