PNAS：印度与撒哈拉以南非洲的妊娠期母亲健康

对印度和撒哈拉以南非洲地区的母亲营养的一项比较提出了非洲儿童常常比对应的印度儿童更高更大的一个可能的原因。

印度人类出生数量占了全世界人类出生数量的1/5，但是对于母亲健康的信息的了解相对较少。一项2005年的人口与健康调查(DHS)发现，超过1/3的15到49岁的印度妇女体重不足，这带来了对孕妇的健康与营养的担忧。

Diane Coffey对人口与健康调查(DHS)数据集应用了调整权重的估计策略，从而评估妊娠前的体重指数、体重不足的比率，以及在妊娠期间体重的增加。

这位作者还建立了一个关于撒哈拉以南非洲地区女性体重和妊娠期长度的现有信息的数据库。对来自印度和非洲的数据的分析表明，估计42.2%的印度女性在妊娠开始的时候体重不足，相比之下非洲的数字是16.5%。由于妊娠前的体重不足以及这些地区的女性在妊娠期间都几乎没有增加体重，印度女性妊娠期结束时候的平均体重低于妊娠期开始时候的非洲女性的平均体重。

这组作者说，这些发现强调了需要进行进一步的研究从而理解应该如何改善处于妊娠期的印度妇女的健康。

原文链接：Prepregnancy body mass and weight gain duringpregnancy in India and sub-Saharan Africa

Despite being wealthier, Indian children are significantly shorter and smaller than African children. These differences begin very early in Life, suggesting that they may in part reflect differences in mateRNAl health. By applying reweighting estimation strategies to the Demographic and Health Surveys, this paper reports, to my knowledge, the first representative estimates of prepregnancy body mass index and weight gainduring pregnancy for India and sub-Saharan Africa. I find that 42.2% of prepregnant women in Indiaare underweight compared with 16.5% of prepregnant women in sub-Saharan Africa. Levels ofprepregnancy underweight for India are almost seven percentage points higher than the average fraction underweight among women 15–49 y old. This difference in part reflects a previously unquantified relationship among age, fertility, and underweight; childbearing is concentrated in the narrow age range inwhich Indian women are most likely to be underweight. Further, because weight gain during pregnancyis low, averaging about 7 kg for a full-term pregnancy in both regions, the average woman in India endspregnancy weighing less than the average woman in sub-Saharan Africa begins pregnancy. Poor maternal health among Indian women is of global significance because India is home to one fifth of the world’s births.

doi: 10.1073/PNAS.1416964112

作者：Diane Coffey