Health leaders aim to cut premature birth rate

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. health leaders this week are crafting a blueprint on how to reverse the worrisome steady increase in babies being delivered prematurely, with one in every eight U.S. infants now born pre-term.

Premature babies -- defined as born before the 37th week of pregnancy instead of the typical pregnancy of roughly 40 weeks -- face an increased risk of numerous medical and developmental problems.

"It's a trend that is very unhealthy, one that's going in the wrong direction and has been for quite some time, and that is very harmful to babies and to families -- and costly in economic terms to the nation," Dr. Duane Alexander, a senior official at the U.S. government's National Institutes of Health, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday.

Acting U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Steven Galson, NIH officials and outside experts, including the infant health advocacy group March of Dimes, met in a conference mandated by Congress to devise recommendations to reduce premature births.

More than half a million babies are born prematurely each year in the United States, and there has been a 20 percent increase in the rate since 1990.

Pre-term babies are at higher risk for birth defects, low birth weight, breathing problems due to underdeveloped lungs, life-threatening infections, blindness, hearing loss, a lung condition called respiratory distress syndrome, cerebral palsy, learning and developmental disabilities and premature death.

"We're really talking about a very, very serious health issue here," March of Dimes President Jennifer Howse said.

Alexander, director of the NIH's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, noted that several factors are driving the rise in premature births.

These include maternal health behaviors such as smoking and drinking alcohol, more in vitro fertilization pregnancies that increase the likelihood of twins and other multiple births, and maternal obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes.

Alexander said recommendations being considered include efforts to better get the word out about things like risky maternal behaviors and changes to in vitro fertilization practices to reduce the chances of multiple births.

The pre-term birth trend also is being driven by Caesarean section deliveries, a study last month by the March of Dimes and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.

In the United States, 5 percent of babies in 1970 were born by C-section. In 2006, the figure was about 31 percent.

"Some of those C-sections are absolutely essential. They are medically required because the mother is sick or the baby is sick, or both," Howse said.

"And then some of those C-sections are elective. That's an area that the conference is talking about, how to do a better job educating moms and doing education and outreach to health providers so that the rate of elective C-sections starts to decline," Howse added.

(Editing by Julie Steenhuysen)