Stillbirth as risk factor for depression and anxiety in subsequent pregnancy

BMJ 1999;319:1497 ( 4 December )

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Stillbirth as risk factor for depression and anxiety in subsequent pregnancy

References were misinterpreted

Depression after stillbirth may simply reflect normal process of grieving

Authors' reply

References were misinterpreted

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ Hughes et al state that "maternal anxiety in pregnancy is associated with earlier births and lower birthweight"¹and then cite two papers, one of which found no relation betweenanxiety and prematurity or low birth weight²; the other foundno relation between anxiety and low birth weight but did finda relation between anxiety and preterm birth.³ This secondstudy was, however, fundamentally flawed: it consisted of a highlyselected group of only 90 women, less than 3% of whom had smoked,drunk alcohol in pregnancy, or taken illicit drugs.³ Assessmentof the women was confined to the third trimester. The associationfound between anxiety and prematurity was based on 12 infantsbeing born prematurely. No confidence intervals were given throughoutthepaper.

Of course researchers will always cite papers that support their observations or hypotheses. However, it is interesting thatapart from misinterpreting the above papers, the authors, . . . [Full text of this article]

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Stillbirth as risk factor for depression and anxiety in the subsequent pregnancy: cohort study: P M Hughes, P Turton, and C D H Evans
BMJ 1999 318: 1721-1724. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]