Published 28 October 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a2312
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a2312

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Preterm delivery is more likely in women with depressive symptoms

Janice Hopkins Tanne

1 New York

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

Women who have depressive symptoms early in pregnancy are more likely to deliver their babies prematurely than those without such symptoms, a new study has found.

The large US, non-profit healthcare group Kaiser Permanente, which was behind the study, had already begun using a simple questionnaire to screen for depressive symptoms in pregnant women in a pilot project in northern California and is expecting to using it more widely, said the study’s lead author, De-Kun Li, senior research scientist at the Kaiser Foundation Research Institute, Oakland, California.

The study reported that 41% of women in early pregnancy had significant depressive symptoms and 22% had severe symptoms. In comparison with women without depressive symptoms, women with severe symptoms had almost twice the risk of preterm delivery, while those with significant symptoms had a 60% higher risk (Human Reproduction, doi:10.1093/humrep/den342).

Delivery before 37 weeks of gestation is the . . . [Full text of this article]


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