ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, April 10, 1996 TAG: 9604100087
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: C-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHICAGO
SOURCE: Associated Press
Pregnant women who smoke are 50 percent more likely to have mentally retarded children, according to a study released Tuesday.
Smoking during pregnancy previously was linked to low birth weight, infant mortality and lower intelligence in children. This study was the first to connect smoking with retardation, said Carolyn D. Drews, an associate professor of epidemiology at Emory University who headed the research.
``I certainly think there is more study that's needed,'' Drews said. ``If these data represent a true finding, it's one more reason for women to stop smoking during pregnancy.''
A related study in the same issue of the journal Pediatrics concluded that secondhand smoke ``places an enormous burden of illness on children, far greater than would be tolerated with any other product.''
In the pregnancy study, researchers interviewed the mothers of 221 Atlanta-area children with mental retardation of an unknown cause and 400 other mothers in a control group.
The study - published in this month's issue of Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics - found:
* Women who smoked while pregnant were 50 percent more likely to have mentally retarded children.
* About 35 percent of women who gave birth to retarded children reported smoking as few as five cigarettes a week during pregnancy.
* Women who smoked during the last six months of pregnancy, when a fetus develops many organs, were 60 percent more likely to have retarded children than women who did not smoke in that period.
* Pregnant women who smoked at least a pack of cigarettes a day were 85 percent more likely to give birth to a retarded child.
The researchers considered children retarded if their IQ was lower than 70 when they were 10 years old.
About 24 percent of women without mentally retarded children said they had smoked while pregnant, according to the study conducted by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Batelle Centers for Public Health Practice and Education, both in Atlanta.
The researchers factored in elements believed to increase the chance of mental retardation, such as the child's gender and race and the mother's age, economic status, education and alcohol use.
Dr. Julian Ullman, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, called the study very disturbing.
``There's no question it's another reason for women to stop smoking,'' Ullman said. ``No woman wants to be, nor should be, responsible for causing harm to her unborn child when that harm is preventable.''
In the other study, the authors said up to 360 children die each year from lower respiratory illness associated with secondhand smoke and fires started by smoking materials.
They also estimated that other people's smoking is related to up to 300 fire-related injuries among children, as well as 21,000 tonsillectomies or adenoidectomies, 529,000 doctor visits for asthma, 190,000 cases of pneumonia and 2.2 million middle ear infections.
The study was headed by Joseph R. DiFranza from the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and Robert A. Lew from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
They drew their statistics from a number of other studies of the effect of secondhand smoke on specific illnesses and conditions.
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