Alcohol consumption and outcome of pregnancy.

In a prospective study 1256 pregnant women at their first antenatal visit were asked if they drank alcohol every day, occasionally, or not at all, both at that time and before the diagnosis of pregnancy. There were no significant differences, among the three alcohol groups, in the proportions having miscarriages, perinatal deaths, congenital anomalies, or premature births. Women who reported drinking every day before pregnancy was diagnosed had heavier babies than those who did not drink at all, but there were no differences in mean birth weight according to alcohol use at the first antenatal visit.

Fetal loss rates and their relation to pregnancy order.

Much of the recent controversy surrounding the relation between fetal death and pregnancy order has centred around the appropriateness of different types of analyses. In the present paper the interpretation of various methods are discussed with reference to "real" and "hypothetical" data. The pattern of results obtained when the fetal loss rates of a group of pregnancies are tabulated by pregnancy order was found to depend on the risk and parity distributions of the study population.

Poor reproductive outcome in insulin-dependent diabetic women associated with later development of other endocrine disorders in the mothers.

In a prospective study of insulin-dependent diabetic women who in the 1950s were involved in a drug trial, 13 (14%) of those who were still alive 27 years later were reported to have acquired thyroid disease or pernicious anaemia during the follow-up period. This suggests that their diabetes mellitus was a manifestation of a more generalised polyendocrine disorder. The pregnancy history of these 13 women differed strikingly from that of the other 82 insulin-dependent diabetic women: in the diabetic women who subsequently acquired other endocrine disease 69% of pregnancies resulted in a fetal or infant death, compared with 44% in other insulin-dependent diabetic women (p less than 0.

A comparison of standardized and proportional mortality ratios.

Proportional mortality analyses are traditionally considered to be unreliable because they lack information on persons at risk. Standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) are often used in preference to proportional mortality ratios ( PMRs ) even when the denominator or numerator of rates is known to be biased. Examination of data from 30 randomly selected occupational units described by the U.

Rationalisation of therapy in severe epilepsy.

Anticonvulsant therapy in 18 institutionalised adult epileptic persons was rationalised. The mean number of drugs administered was reduced from 3.2 to 2.

Outcome of pregnancies following the use of oral contraceptives.

The use of oral contraception by women doctors on the Medical Register for England and Wales in 1975 was studied and related to the outcome of their pregnancies. Nearly two thirds had used oral contraception at some time, but less than one third of their pregnancies had followed its use. Users tended to be younger at the time of the survey and to smoke in pregnancy more often.

Birth weight before and after a spontaneous abortion.

A survey of pregnancies occurring in 3502 women doctors provided an opportunity to examine the relationship between early fetal loss and birth weight. This was found to be complex. The most important observations were that the mean birth weight of babies preceding a spontaneous fetal loss was lower than that of livebirths preceding another livebirth, and that in the subgroup of women with repeated early losses, mean birth weight fell with increasing pregnancy order.

[Electroencephalographic problems in newborn infants].

The authors present the results of electroencephalographic examinations performed at random in a group of 100 newborn "risk infants". Ordinary electroencephalograms were compared with those obtained by long-time polygraphic recording. It was found that ordinary electroencephalography was quite acceptable for the basic diagnosis of neurological diseases.

Fetal loss, gravidity, and pregnancy order.

An investigation of the reproductive history of 3068 women doctors showed that the risk of fetal loss at a given pregnancy order varied with their gravidity--that is, the total number of pregnancies that has occurred before the survey. Fetal loss rates in even the first pregnancy varied with eventual gravidity in a J-shaped manner. They fell from 12.