Maternal socioeconomic and lifestyle factors during pregnancy and the risk of congenital heart defects

Renata Kučienė, Virginija Dulskienė

Institute of Cardiology, Kaunas University of Medicine, Lithuania

Key words: case-control study; congenital heart defects; socioeconomic factors; smoking.

Summary. The objective of study was to estimate the importance of maternal socioeconomic and lifestyle factors during pregnancy in the risk of congenital heart defects in Kaunas infant population in 1999–2005.

Material and methods. An epidemiological case-control study was conducted. The study comprised 187 newborns with congenital heart defects (cases) and 643 randomly selected newborns without any defects (controls), born in Kaunas city during 1999–2005. Modern epidemiological methods were used for data analysis. A multivariate logistic regression was used to determine adjusted risk factors of congenital heart defects.

Results. The logistic multivariate regression analysis showed that low and moderate maternal education significantly increased the risk of congenital heart defects (primary or basic [OR=3.43; 95% CI, 1.54–7.64] and secondary [OR=1.56; 95% CI, 1.00–2.45] vs advanced vocational or higher education). The housewives and workers had a higher risk of delivering a newborn with congenital heart defects than the office workers (OR=2.34; 95% CI, 1.34–4.10 and OR=1.28; 95% CI, 0.79–2.07, respectively). Maternal smoking during pregnancy tended to increase the risk of congenital heart defects by 48% (OR=1.48; 95% CI, 0.82–2.67).

Conclusions. According to our study results, unfavorable maternal socioeconomic factors and smoking during pregnancy increased the risk of congenital heart defects.

Correspondence to R. Kučienė, Institute of Cardiology, Kaunas University of Medicine, Sukilėlių 17, 50161 Kaunas, Lithuania. E-mail: renatakuciene@yahoo.com

Received 20 May 2008, accepted 6 November 2009