Maternal Fish Intake in Late Pregnancy and the Frequency of Low Birth Weight and Intrauterine Growth Retardation in a Cohort of British Infants

The Scientific Paper:

I. Rogers, P. Emmett, A. Ness, and J. Golding plus the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) Study Team. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. Vol. 58. pp. 486-492. 2004.
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Review This Scientific Paper’s Abstract:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db
=PubMed&list_uids=15143117&dopt=Citation

The Purpose of this Study:
These scientists investigated the relationship between the amount and type of fish eaten by mothers living in southwest England during their late pregnancy and how often they delivered low-weight infants. The scientists also looked at whether eating fish is linked to slow growth of the infant while in the womb.

Some Background, Methods, Results, Caveats, and Other Select Points:

• This peer-reviewed, scientific paper was published in 2004.
• The scientists looked at fish eaten by 12,441 expectant mothers participating in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC). A food questionnaire (to learn how often and how much certain foods were eaten) was completed during week 32 of the women’s pregnancies. After excluding stillbirths and multiple births, the number of newborn infants studied was reduced to 11,851. The mothers’ diets were analyzed according to their calculated weekly intake of a certain type of beneficial fatty acid and how often the mother ate white fish and oily fish. Information about birth weight, sex of the child, and the pregnancy were taken from hospital records. This information was then matched-up with the results of the completed food questionnaires.
• The study design is limited in being able to detect a relation between eating fish and early birth because the questionnaire was not sent out until 32 weeks into each pregnancy.
• Initial analyses revealed some positive relations between the average infant’s birth weight and the fish or certain beneficial fatty acids eaten by the mother. These positive relations disappeared when the data were looked at in light of various outside influences.
• The question of eating oily fish did not distinguish between tuna and other types of oily fish on the food questionnaire used in this study.
• The study design is limited in its ability to distinguish between levels of fish eaten at the lowest end of the mercury exposure scale.
• The scientists noted a number of outside influences that may have hidden or blurred a relation between eating fish and low birth weight plus slow growth in the womb.

A Bottom Line:
These study results lend some support to the idea that eating fish or beneficial fatty acids during pregnancy may influence infant growth rate in the womb. However, these results provide no evidence that increasing fish consumption extends the length of a pregnancy.

Find This Scientific Paper for Your Review:
Maternal Fish Intake in Late Pregnancy and the Frequency of Low Birth Weight and Intrauterine Growth Retardation in a Cohort of British Infants. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. Vol. 58. pp. 486-492. 2004.