Stress and preterm birth
More than 80 scientific investigations on stress and
PTB were recently reviewed by Dunkel Schetter and
Glynn [7&&], of which a majority had prospective
designs, large samples, and validated measures,
and were fairly well controlled for confounds such
as medical risks, smoking, education, income, and
parity. These studies can be grouped by the type
of stress examined. Of the more than a dozen
published studies assessing ‘major life events in
pregnancy’, a majority found significant effects;
women who experienced major life events such as
the death of a family member were at 1.4 to 1.8 times
greater risk of PTB, with strongest effects when
events occurred early in pregnancy. The majority
of a second, smaller group of studies on