Influence of gestational hypertensive disease and antenatal health education on infant low birth weight

Objective To examine interactive effect of gestational hypertensive disease and antenatal health education on infant low birth weight.Methods With case-control design,1 954 puerperae hospitalized at 14 hospitals in Jiangmen city of Guangdong province were surveyed with a self-administered questionnaire on maternal health and medical records of their newborns were collected between August 2015 and May 2016.Results Totally 580 cases (puerperae giving births to the singletons with the birth weight of <2 500 grams) and 1 374 hospital-matched controls giving the birth at the time just after the birth of the selected case to the singleton with the body weight of ≥2 500 and <4 000 grams were included in the study.The prevalence rate of gestational hypertension in the cases was 15.34% and significantly higher than that (3.28%) among the controls (P<0.001) and the cases reported significantly lower ratio of receiving antenatal health education than the controls (81.38% vs.86.97%,P=0.001).Multivariate logistic regression revealed significantly interactive effect of gestational hypertension and antenatal health education on the occurrence of low birth weight after adjusting potential confounders (P<0.05).The analysis stratified by gestational hypertension status showed a significant association between antenatal health education and low birth weight only among the puerperae with gestational hypertension (odds ratio=0.13,95% confidence interval=0.028-0.614),but not among those without the disease(P=0.16).Conclusion There is a significantly interactive effect of gestational hypertension and antenatal health education on infant low birth weight and antenatal health education is a protective factor for infant low birth weight among pregnant women with gestational hypertension.