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Cigarette smoking and preeclampsia
H Klonoff-Cohen1, S Edelstein, D Savitz
1Division of Epidemiology, Community and Family Medicine, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla.
Objective:
To examine the relationship between cigarette smoking during pregnancy and the development of preeclampsia.
Methods:
A case-control study compared the smoking histories of 110 nulliparous preeclamptic women and 115 healthy nulliparas aged 15-35 years who delivered at North Carolina Memorial Hospital.
Results:
Unconditioned logistic regression relating smoking during pregnancy to preeclampsia yielded an odds ratio of 0.71 (95% confidence interval 0.33-1.50) when adjusting for working during pregnancy, alcohol use, medication use, contraceptive choices with the father of the index pregnancy, and family history of preeclampsia. There was no evidence of a dose-response effect of reduced risk for heavier smokers.
Conclusions:
Despite major methodologic improvements from previous studies, including rigorous diagnostic criteria for preeclampsia, a negative, non-statistically significant association persisted between cigarette smoking during pregnancy and preeclampsia, similar in magnitude to that of previous reports.