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A.In the last 10 years or so it has become clear that waist circumference, which reflects the amount of fat in the abdomen, is a risk factor for heart disease. The greater the size of your waist the greater the risk. Indeed waist circumference has been advocated as a health screening test. Pre-eclampsia is a high blood pressure problem that affects 2-4 of every 100 pregnant women. It causes damage to the blood vessels and can affect not only the mother, but also the baby through damage to the afterbirth. It has some similarities to the underlying disturbance in blood vessels seen in heart disease Could the size of a woman’s waist also predict if she is at risk of problems in pregnancy?

This question was answered by a group of researchers in Glasgow who measured the waistline of over 1100 pregnant women in early pregnancy. They found a 3-4cm greater waist circumference in women who subsequently developed pregnancy related high blood pressure or pre-eclampsia compared to those who did not. They calculated that a waist circumference of 80 cm or more in early pregnancy almost doubled the risk of high blood pressure and almost tripled the risk of pre-eclampsia. So getting your waistline into shape before pregnancy with a good diet and regular exercise might not only be good for your figure, but also the health of you and your baby.

Baby immunisations are not implicated in cot deaths

Sudden unexplained death in infancy or cot death is a devastating experience for any parent. Parents often seek an explanation for the death and wonder if there was anything that might have prevented it.

Childhood immunisation against diptheria, tetanus and whooping cough, and polio are given at 2, 3 and 4 months of age respectively in the UK. This represents an accelerated immunisation programme as until 1990, these immunisations had been given at 3,5 and 9 months. The timing of these baby immunisations corresponds to the peak time of cot death. This led researchers to question whether there was a link between them. Some reports had suggested a possible link including with the accelerated programme but most did not support a link.

Recently a group of leading UK researchers from Bristol, Newcastle, Exeter and Leeds reported the results of an important study that investigated this possible link in depth. They studied 325 infants who had died from cot death, 72 who had died suddenly but where the death was explicable, and 1588 babies of the same age. They compared details of immunisation between the groups. They found that even after taking account of sleeping position and other risk factors for cot death, there was no link between the UK accelerated immunisation programme and cot death. Indeed there was a trend towards a reduction in the risk of cot death in those babies who had been immunised. Although the cause of cot death remains unexplained, it appears that baby immunisations can be removed from the list of suspects.

*Reference: [Source: Fleming PJ et al (2001) BMJ,322, 822-5.]