Fathers-to-be who smoke may harm their babies

Beijing: Fathers-to-be, take note! Smoking may increase the baby’s risk of developing congenital heart defects — the leading cause of stillbirth, a study has found. Congenital heart affect eight in 1,000 babies born worldwide. Prognosis and quality of life continues to improve with innovative surgeries, but the effects are still lifelong. The findings, published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, suggest that fathers-tobe should quit smoking.

“Fathers are a large source of secondhand smoke for pregnant women, which appears to be even more harmful to unborn children than women smoking themselves,” said Jiabi Qin, from Central South University in China.

“Smoking is teratogenic, meaning it can cause developmental malformations. The association between prospective parents smoking and the risk of congenital heart defects has attracted more and more attention with the increasing number of smokers of childbearing age,” said Qin.

According to researchers, this was the first meta-analysis to examine the relationships between paternal smoking and maternal passive smoking and risk of congenital heart defects in offspring. Previous analyses have focused on women smokers. “In fact, smoking in fathers-to-be and exposure to passive smoking in pregnant women are more common than smoking in pregnant women,” Qin said.

The researchers compiled the best available evidence up to June 2018. This amounted to 125 studies involving 137,574 babies with congenital heart defects and 8.8 million prospective parents. The overall risk of congenital heart defects with all types of parental smoking was greater when the analysis was restricted to Asian populations.