The role of depressive symptoms in the pathway of demographic and psychosocial risks to preterm birth and small for gestational age

Objective: depressive symptoms during pregnancy are associated with preterm birth (PTB) and small for gestational age (SGA). Depressive symptoms and PTB and SGA, however, share similar demographic and psychosocial risk factors. Therefore, we investigated whether depressive symptomatology is an independent risk factor, or a mediator in the pathway of demographic and psychosocial risks to PTB and SGA. Design: multicentre follow-up study. Participants and setting: pregnant women (n=1013) from midwifery practices, secondary hospitals and a tertiary hospital in three urban areas in the Netherlands. Measurements: initial risk factors and depressive symptoms were assessed with the Mind2Care instrument, including Edinburgh Depression Scale (EDS) during early pregnancy. Pregnancy outcomes were extracted from medical records. A formal mediation analysis was conducted to investigate the role of depressive symptoms in the pathway to PTB and SGA. Findings: a univariate association between depressive symptoms and PTB (OR:1.04; 95% CI:1.00-1.08) was observed. After adjusting for the risk factors educational level and smoking in the mediation analysis, this association disappeared. One educational aspect remained associated: low education OR: 1.06; 95%-CI:1.02-1.10. Key conclusions: depressive symptomatology appeared no mediator in the pathway of demographic and psychosocial risks to PTB or SGA. The presumed association between depressive symptoms and PTB seems spurious and may be explained by demographic and psychosocial risk factors

Fetal fibronectin status and cervical length in women with threatened preterm labor and the effectiveness of maintenance tocolysis

Item does not contain fulltextOBJECTIVE: To assess the effect of maintenance tocolysis in women who are at high or low risk for preterm delivery according to fetal fibronectin (fFN) status and cervical length (CL). STUDY DESIGN: We compared the risk of preterm delivery in fFN pos and fFN neg women and in women with a CL /=15 mm, by using the Cox regression. Differences between the effectiveness of maintenance tocolysis in high- and low-risk women were assessed by using an interaction term. RESULTS: 122 fFN tests were taken, of which 50 were fFN pos. CL was measured in 236 women, of whom 52 women had a CL <15 mm. The median gestational age at delivery was lower in fFN pos women; fFN pos women had a higher hazard for preterm delivery at any point of time (HR 4.7; 95% CI 2.9 to 7.6). Comparable results were seen for CL. Neither fFN status nor CL did alter the effect of maintenance tocolysis, which was ineffective in the total randomized group, on the risk of preterm delivery (p for interaction = 0.87 for fFN and 0.18 for CL). CONCLUSION: Maintenance tocolytic therapy with nifedipine is ineffective and not dependent on fFN or CL status