AI Article Synopsis

  • The study looked at how having a short cervix during pregnancy affects the chances of giving birth early (before 37 weeks).
  • Out of 1409 pregnant women studied, only a small number had a short cervix, but those with it had a much higher risk of preterm birth compared to those without.
  • However, most babies were still born on time, showing that fixing short cervixes wouldn't really change the overall rate of preterm births in the population.

Article Abstract

Objective: To illustrate the difference between exposure effects and population attributable effects.

Methods: We examined the effect of mid-pregnancy short cervical length (<25 mm) on preterm birth using data from a prospective cohort of pregnant women in Lusaka, Zambia. Preterm birth was live birth or stillbirth before 37 weeks of pregnancy. For estimation, we used multivariable regression and parametric g-computation.

Results: Among 1409 women included in the analysis, short cervix was rare (2.4%); 13.6% of births were preterm. Exposure effect estimates were large (marginal risk ratio 2.86, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.80-4.54), indicating that the preterm birth risk was substantially higher among women with a short cervix compared with women without a short cervix. However, the population attributable effect estimates were close to the null (risk ratio 1.06, 95% CI 1.02-1.10), indicating that an intervention to counteract the impact of short cervix on preterm birth would have minimal effect on the population risk of preterm birth.

Conclusion: Although authors often refer to "the" effect, there are actually different types of effects, as we have illustrated here. In planning research, it is important to consider which effect to estimate to ensure that the estimate aligns with the research objective.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11155393PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ijgo.14372DOI Listing

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