BMJ 2002;324:1279 ( 25 May )

Letters

Consumption of seafood and preterm delivery

    Encouraging pregnant women to eat fish did not show effect
    Method of cooking should be named

Encouraging pregnant women to eat fish did not show effect

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

EDITOR---Should we routinely encourage all pregnant women to consume sea fish or to increase their consumption of sea fish? This is the main practical question inspired by the study by Olsen and Secher.1

In 1991-2, in the antenatal clinic of Whipps Cross Hospital in east London, we randomly encouraged 499 pregnant women (before 20 weeks) to increase their consumption of sea fish. Each woman was matched with a control who had had the same number of births. We could not detect any significant effect of our dietary recommendations in the perinatal period in terms birth weight and duration of pregnancy.2 The rate of prematurity was 34/468 in the study group v 44/462 in the control group (95% confidence interval 0.45 to 1.2).

We repeated similar studies in three different contexts: a French university hospital (Rennes), a Dutch midwifery practice (Boxtel), and another hospital in east London (Newham). We were not encouraged . . . [Full text of this article]
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

Low consumption of seafood in early pregnancy as a risk factor for preterm delivery: prospective cohort study
Sjúrdur Fródi Olsen and Niels Jørgen Secher
BMJ 2002 324: 447-450. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

This article has been cited by other articles:

  • Allgar, V. L, Neal, R. D, Pascoe, S. W, Green, A. M (2002). Grading referrals to specialist breast units. BMJ 325: 392-392 [Full text]  
Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ