Hypertension and placental diseases are most common causes of stillbirth in obese women, study finds

The risk of stillbirth increases with increasing overweight, and hypertension and placental diseases are the most common causes of fetal death in this group, a study from the United States has found.

The researchers randomly sampled 1829 singleton deliveries from a cohort of 68 437 eligible births between 2003 and 2010 at Magee-Womens Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.1 They added all remaining cases of stillbirth that occurred during the study period but that were not already in the random sample, giving …