Open AccessMight Rare Factors Account for Most of the Mortality of Preterm Babies?
Author(s) -
Olga Basso,
Allen J. Wilcox
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
epidemiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.901
H-Index - 173
eISSN - 1531-5487
pISSN - 1044-3983
DOI - 10.1097/ede.0b013e31821266c5
Subject(s) - confounding , medicine , gestational age , mortality rate , infant mortality , premature birth , pediatrics , pregnancy , obstetrics , population , environmental health , biology , genetics
Preterm delivery has a variety of causes, with each of these presumably carrying its own mortality risk. To the extent that they add to the risk of mortality, the various pathologic factors triggering preterm delivery will confound the causal contribution of gestational age to mortality, inflating the observed rates of gestational-age-specific mortality. We have previously estimated that about half of the mortality of US preterm singletons may be due to unmeasured pathologies that increase mortality risk and also cause preterm birth. In this paper, we examine the impact that rare factors may have, at least in theory, on preterm mortality.