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Early Prenatal Food Supplementation Ameliorates Thenegative Association Of Maternal Stress With Birth Size In A Randomised Trial, Amy L. Frith, Ruchira T. Naved, Lars Ake Persson, Edward A. Frongillo Jr.

Faculty Publications

Low birthweight increases the risk of infant mortality, morbidity and poor development. Maternal nutrition and stress influence birth size, but their combined effect is not known.We hypothesised that an early-invitation time to start a prenatal food supplementation programme could reduce the negative influence of prenatal maternal stress on birth size, and that effect would differ by infant sex. A cohort of 1041 pregnant women, who had delivered an infant, June 2003–March 2004, was sampled from among 3267 in the randomised controlled trial, Maternal Infant Nutritional Interventions Matlab, conducted in Matlab, Bangladesh. At 8 weeks gestation, women were randomly assigned an …