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Maternal consumption of coffee during pregnancy and stillbirth and infant death in first year of life: prospective study

BMJ 2003; 326 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.326.7386.420 (Published 22 February 2003) Cite this as: BMJ 2003;326:420

Rapid Response:

What about Tea Intake and Oral Tobacco Chewing

The article by Wisborg et al (1) highlights the fact that pregnant
ladies need to be more careful and responsible about their dietary
intake,smoking habits,alcohol intake and coffee intake as all these may be
associated with poorer perinatal outcome. The authors found almost
doubling in the rate of stillbirths in the women taking more than 8 cups
of coffee.

Although the authors considered smoking and alcoho; habits into
consideration, but they did not consider dietary habits and profession
into consideration which could have affected the stillbirth rate in the
women as dietary habits are known to affect the nutritional status of
women indirectly affecting the stillbirth rate (2).Indian women almost
exclusively drink tea with less of tea leaves and more of milk and sugar
with much less caffeine intake and it is unlikely that it will affect the
stillbirth rate. Also some Indian women have habit of chewing tobacco and
others have the habit of eating soil
( pica)which may also have an effect on the perinatal outcome. However as
suggested by studies before coffee intake causes higher spontaneous
abortion rate. We agree with the authors that coffee and tea intake should
be cut down to the minimum for better perinatal outcome and the women
should be advised to take adequate diet in iron , calories and proteins to
avoid anaemia and malnutrition during pregnancy as anaemia is associated
with poor perinatal outcome (4).

References:

1.Wisborg K, Kesmodel U, Bech BH,Hedegaard M,Henriksen TB. Maternal
consumption of coffee during pregnancy and stillbirth and infant death in
first year of life: prospective study. BMJ 2003; 326 : 420.

2.Sharma JB,Soni D,Murthy NS,Malhotra M. Effect of dietary habits on
prevalence of anemia in pregnant women of Delhi. J Obstet Gynaecol Res
2003; 29 (2); 73-78.

3.Cnattingus S,Sigorello LB,Anneren G,Clausson B,Ekbom A,Ljunger E. et al.
Caffeine intake and the risk of first trimester spontaneous abortions.N
Engl J Med 2000; 393: 1819-25.

4. Malhotra M,Sharma JB,Batra S,Sharma S,Murthy NS,Arora R. Maternal and
perinatal outcome in varying degrees of anemia. Int J Gynecol Obstet
2002;79: 93-100.

Competing interests:  
None declared

Competing interests: No competing interests

23 February 2003
Monika Malhotra
Senior Research Associate
Jai B. Sharma
Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi 110002,India