An Overview of the Role of Effective Maternal Indicators on Birth Weight

Background & Aims of the Study: Birth weight is one of the most fundamentaland common health indicators used to assess the infants status in each country.Maternal blood and its various cell types and parameters are of vital factors haveimpression on the fetus. Several risk factors are considered as the causes of lowbirth weight; however, in many cases it has no obvious reason. This study aims atreviewing the role of effective maternal indicators on birth weight. This researchis of overview type designed using 19 papers collected from academic databasesand search engines such as Pubmed, Proquest, Elsevier, Scopus. Papers wereselected by cross-sectional and cohort designs, clinical trials, and systematicreviews. Papers were also searched in Persian databases, such as Iranmedex,Medlib, as well as scientific journals websites. Evaluation of various maternalparameters such as hematocrit, body mass index, hemoglobin, blood lead, and zincand iron levels showed direct and meaningful relationship between child weightand maternal hematocrit, hemoglobin, and body mass index. Moreover, thereexists an inverse relationship between child weight and maternal iron while it isnoteworthy that there is no relationship between maternal blood lead level andchild weight. At the end, it can be stated that many of the maternal parametershave adverse effects on the fetus; however, some of them has not been confirmedeverywhere. Perhaps the reason for this difference in results comes fromdifferences in race, geography, lifestyle, laboratory practices and etc. Thus, it isrecommended that further studies be conducted in any region to determine theeffect of each of these parameters.