Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) surely don’t represent something that a person can neglect. The World Health Organization (WHO) reveals that every day across the globe, over 1 million such infections are acquired. That’s an alarming statistic, and a new study should make us all even more cautious.
CNN tells us about the new research claiming that there’s a higher risk in premature births for those women who deal with sexually transmitted infections such as gonorrhea, chlamydia, or syphilis.
Over 14 million mother-infant pairs examined
The medical records and data from birth certificates were used from more than 14 million pairs of mothers and infants. The purpose was to determine the connections between the infections of the mothers and preterm birth. The researchers believe that previous studies regarding how developing fetuses are harmed by the infections of their mothers weren’t complete.
It turns out that from all the women from the US who had given birth from January 2016 to December 2019, 0.3% had gonorrhea, 1.9% had chlamydia, and 0.1% had syphilis. 8% of all newborns were premature births. Calculations had shown that the mothers suffering from the STIs mentioned were between 1.04 and 1.17 more likely to have a moderately preterm birth compared to those women who don’t have STIs. When it comes to infections with syphilis and gonorrhea, these infections are more strongly connected to very preterm births. Gonorrhea and chlamydia are so dangerous that they can not only cause preterm birth – they can also be transmitted to babies during childbirth.
Kelli Ryckman, one of the study’s co-authors and a professor of epidemiology from the College of Public Health of the University of Iowa, stated as quoted by CNN:
Even though some of the effects are small, STIs do appear to increase your chance of delivering preterm.
The new study was published in JAMA Network Open.
