ResearchObstetricsPhysical exercise during pregnancy and fetal growth measures: a study within the Danish National Birth Cohort
Section snippets
Materials and Methods
The Danish National Birth Cohort Study (DNBC) is a cohort of a little more than 100,000 pregnancies with written informed consents from the mothers. The initial data collection included telephone interviews, questionnaires, and blood samples and took place between 1996 and 2002.
For this study, we used data from 2 pregnancy interviews carried out at approximately 16 and 31 completed weeks of gestation. More details about the cohort are presented elsewhere.45 Some of the women provided data on
Results
Table 1 shows some characteristics of the women according to exercise, mean birthweight, SGA, and LGA. In 37% of 79,692 pregnancies, the mother engaged in leisure time physical activity at the time of the first pregnancy interview. This proportion decreased to 31% at the time of the second pregnancy interview. Compared with active women, nonexercisers had lower sociooccupational status; were more often parous, overweight, or obese; and were more likely to smoke 10 cigarettes per day or more.
Comment
Overall, this study did not indicate a strong negative effect of leisure-time physical exercise during pregnancy on fetal growth measures recorded at birth. There was a tendency toward smaller size of offspring with exercise and some of the trend tests performed were statistically significant, but the differences are probably too small to cause concern. The results may indicate that the offspring of smoking mothers benefit more from exercise than nonsmokers, although this finding needs to be
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Physical activity during pregnancy and its effects on neonatal outcomes
2022, PlacentaCitation Excerpt :The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), with the approval of the ACOG, recommends 30 min or more of moderate-intensity PA on most days of the week (5 days), or alternatively, 3 days of vigorous activity for 20 min during pregnancy [6]. Consequently, it has been hypothesized that participation in moderate-intensity PA during pregnancy has a beneficial effect on neonatal outcomes at birth, including birth weight, length, head circumference and Apgar score [7]. This hypothesis is based on the assumption of a likely phenomenon, a type of redistribution that, via an adaptive process, could lead to an increase in placental blood irrigation, raising the capacity for oxygen transport and diffusion and thereby resulting in greater fetal oxygen and nutrient uptake [8].
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2022, Reproductive and Developmental ToxicologyDoes exercise during pregnancy impact organs or structures of the maternal-fetal interface?
2021, Tissue and CellCitation Excerpt :However, increased placental growth in response to exercise training has been shown by different groups (Clapp and Rizk, 1992; Jackson et al., 1995). In two large prospective studies, Hilde et al. and Juhl et al. found that placental weight was decreased with increased exercising intensity, with no negative clinical implications (Hilde et al., 2017; Juhl et al., 2010). Importantly, the placental weight and birth weight ratio, a surrogate marker of placental efficiency, were not affected by exercise (Everest et al., 2021; Hilde et al., 2017).
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Cite this article as: Juhl M, Olsen J, Andersen PK, et al. Physical exercise during pregnancy and fetal growth measures: a study within the Danish National Birth Cohort. Am J Obstet Gynecol 2010;202:63.e1-8.
The Danish National Research Foundation established the Danish Epidemiology Science Centre, which initiated and created the Danish National Birth Cohort. The cohort is a result of a major Grant from this foundation. Additional support for the Danish National Birth Cohort is obtained from the Pharmacy Foundation, the Egmont Foundation, the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, and the Augustinus Foundation. This specific study was supported by Grants from the Danish Medical Research Council, the Augustinus Foundation, the Danish Midwifery Association, the Danish Graduate School in Public Health Sciences, and the Danish National Board of Health. None of the funders were involved in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; or preparation, review, or approval of the article.