Pregnant Women who Use Snus are Exposed to Stillbirth Risk
Published on December 2nd, 2010 05:47
Pregnant women who prefer smokeless cigarettes called “snus” are exposing themselves to stillbirth risk on the same basis as women who smoke cigarettes, according to the recent study conducted by the Swedish scientists.
These data, according to experts should serve as a warning to those women who are or may become pregnant that “snus” is not a good and even safe alternative to cigarettes.
Snus differs from other smokeless cigarettes as it is spitless and has insignificant levels of toxins called tobacco-specific nitrosamines.
It is thought that snus is less harmful that regular cigarettes and it has been promoted as a “socially acceptable” way for smokers to stop smoking.
Snus was produced for the first time in Sweden and is still generally used there. For the last few years leading tobacco makers produced their own snus products basing on the Swedish production methods. Such brands as Camel Snus and Marlboro Snus are at present available in the U.S. tobacco market.
It is well known that smoking during pregnancy may lead to miscarriage, low birth weight and stillbirth.
Much less was known about potential dangers of using snus during pregnancy. But a recently conducted research showed that women who used snus during pregnancy had a higher risk of preterm delivery that those women who used regular cigarettes.
For this research, Swedish scientists used a national birth register with information on nearly 611,000 women who pregnant between 1999 and 2006. 58,502 of these women were smokers of regular cigarettes and 7,629 used snus.
1,926 or about 0.3 % of the women from this register had a stillbirth. According to the study those women who reported using snus during pregnancy had a 60 % higher risk of stillbirth than women who didn’t use any tobacco products. The risk was 40 % for light smokers, and for heavy smokers it correspondingly was more than double of those who used no tobacco products.
0.5 % (40 women) who used snus had a stillbirth; that compared with just under 0.3 % (1,386 women out of more than 500,000) of those didn’t smoke during pregnancy.
Of the 41,488 women smokers, who smoked nine or fewer cigarettes per day - 0.4% (172) suffered a stillbirth. And among 17,000 heavy smokers, the stillbirth rate constituted 0.7 % (120).
“Although snus is promoted as a easy way to help people stop smoking, using it when pregnant is note safe and even dangerous,” lead researcher Dr. Anna-Karin Wikstrom, of Karolinska University Hospital Solna in Sweden, stated at the conference.
“These findings are horrific, as in present the marketing of these products are quickly expanding”, stated Dr. Gregory N. Connolly, director of the Tobacco Control Research Program at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Nevertheless the research has limitations. Dr. Connolly noted that women were asked only if they used snus or not, and not how often, as it would help researches understand the situation better and also would provide with new evidences and facts.
