Whether weather matters: Evidence of association between in utero meteorological exposures and foetal growth among Indigenous and non-Indigenous mothers in rural Uganda

Abstract

Pregnancy and birth outcomes have been found to be sensitive to meteorological variation,yet few studies explore this relationship in sub-Saharan Africa where infant mortality ratesare the highest in the world. We address this research gap by examining the associationbetween meteorological factors and birth weight in a rural population in southwesternUganda. Our study included hospital birth records (n = 3197) from 2012 to 2015, for whichwe extracted meteorological exposure data for the three trimesters preceding each birth.We used linear regression, controlling for key covariates, to estimate the timing, strength,and direction of meteorological effects on birth weight. Our results indicated that precipitationduring the third trimester had a positive association with birth weight, with more frequentdays of precipitation associated with higher birth weight: we observed a 3.1g (95% CI: 1.0-5.3g) increase in birth weight per additional day of exposure to rainfall over 5mm. Increasesin average daily temperature during the third trimester were also associated with birthweight, with an increase of 41.8g (95% CI: 0.6-82.9g) per additional degree Celsius. [...

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Last time updated on 17/10/2017

This paper was published in eScholarship@McGill.

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