Predictors of low birth weight in antenatal women

A country’s development is directly proportional to the health status of its people. Health is an essential component in various indices which refl ect the development, like human development index, quality of life, etc. There are several indicators of health, of which life expectancy and birth weight are dynamic and key indicators of health. These indicators indirectly refl ect on the health infrastructure and health care delivery systems in the country. One of the indicators, namely low birth weight is of serious concern in benchmarking the public health infrastructure of a country. It has always been an important subject of nation’s concern and focus of national health policy.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17352/jgro.000053 status with low birth weight. In developing countries, poverty, lack of literacy and poor socioeconomic status are the key determinants of low birth weight. However, in rare situations, low birth weight could be a consequence of genetic factors, including congenital malformations, especially in developed countries.
Considering the importance of birth weight in determining the development of a country, there is a growing need to evaluate the determinants of low birth weight. It is essential to prove the causality of the problem, in order to devise preventive strategies. A thorough knowledge on the predictors and determinants of low birth weight will help in not only creating awareness to impart knowledge to the antenatal women, but also to constitute mechanism of early detection of low birth weight and appropriate management techniques for the same.

Objective
* To estimate the prevalence of maternal and social risk factors of low birth weight.
* To evaluate the correlation between risk factors and low birth weight.
* To estimate the prevalence of low birth weight.

Study setting and study participants
This study was carried out as a cohort study for a period of two years in our tertiary care hospital. All the antenatal women who visited to our hospital during the study period were included in the study. The participants were selected during their fi rst trimester visit for antenatal care. The participants were selected by convenient sampling. A total of 185 antenatal women participated in this study.

Ethical approval and informed consent
Approval was obtained from the institutional ethics committee prior to the commencement of the study. Each participant was explained in detail about the study and informed consent was obtained prior to the data collection.

Data collection
A structured interview schedule was used to collect data regarding the demographics of the study participants. A detailed maternal and antenatal history was recorded followed by physical examination, including the measurement of height and weight of the mother. Hemoglobin levels were measured by cyanmethhemoglobin method to evaluate the presence of anemia. The antenatal mothers were followed up till their delivery and the birth weight of the infant was recorded on a standardized weighing scale.

Data analysis
Data was entered and analyzed using EPI2005 package. Percentages were computed to express the prevalence of risk factors and incidence of low birth weight. Mean birth weight and mean maternal weight were also tabulated.

Results
This study was carried out among 185 antenatal women visiting our tertiary care hospital. The mean age of the study participants was 21.02± 2.3 years. A majority of the participants (56.8%) belonged to class V socioeconomic status classifi ed as per modifi ed B.G. Prasad's classifi cation. About 57.3% of the participants were primi. The background characteristics of the study participants are given in table 1.
The prevalence of risk factors of low birth weight is given in table 2. In this study, about 90(48.6%) of the participants were Above 3 1 0.5

Discussion
This study was conducted with an objective of establishing the predictors of low birth weight. The incidence of low birth weight in our study was 25.4%. Bharati et al in her study reported that 20$ of Indians deliver low birth weight babies, which is similar to our fi nding [7]. The state wise prevalence of low birth weight showed that in Tamil Nadu the prevalence of low birth weight was 21.4% as per NFHS data of 2005-06.
[10] In another study done by Rajeshwari et al in Chennai, the prevalence of low birth weight was 25.8%, similar to our study. In another study done in Vellore, the prevalence of low birth weight was 17%, while the same in Karnataka was 22.5%, which was similar to our study [11]. of the participants. Poor weight gain during pregnancy was associated with low birth weight among the mothers [12]. In a study done by Zhao R, the prevalence of underweight among pregnancy women was 16.3% which is much lesser than our fi ndings [13].

Limitation
This study has emphasized on the high incidence of low birth weight and also elaborated on the predictive risk factors in the mothers. However, the role of several confounders like parity, gestational age, smoking status and presence of other systemic illnesses were not analyzed.