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Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To investigate the association between early-pregnancy weight gain and risk of preeclampsia to inform pregnancy weight gain recommendations.Study Design: We performed a case-cohort study using a hospital database including 80,812 singleton deliveries from Magee-Womens Hospital, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1998-2011). In each of 6 prepregnancy body mass index (BMI) groups, we abstracted serial antenatal weight measurements from the records of up to 339 preeclampsia cases and 1254 randomly selected pregnancies. Early gestational weight gain (16-19 weeks' gestation) was standardized for gestational duration using BMI-specific z-score charts. Multivariable log-binomial regression was used to assess the association between weight gain z-score and risk of preeclampsia. We determined the impact of preeclampsia misclassification using probabilistic bias analysis.Main Outcome Measure: Risk of preeclampsia.Results: For normal weight women, there was a steady increase in preeclampsia risk with increasing early gestational weight gain z-score. For example, compared with a weight gain of 1.2 kg (z-score = -1 SD), a 7.2-kg weight gain (z-score = +1 SD) at 16 weeks was associated with 1.3 (0.50, 2.2) excess preeclampsia cases per 100 deliveries. Weight loss at 16-19 weeks among grade 2 or 3 obese women was associated with a reduced risk of preeclampsia. Associations were null among overweight and grade 1 obese women. The bias analysis supported the validity of the conventional analysis.Conclusions: Early-pregnancy weight gain may be associated with preeclampsia in some BMI groups. Future revisions of pregnancy weight gain recommendations should account for preeclampsia risks from this and additional studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Weight gain in early pregnancy may influence a woman's risk of developing preeclampsia. However, the consequences of weight gain throughout pregnancy up to the diagnosis of preeclampsia are unknown. The aim of this study was to determine whether pregnancy weight gain before the diagnosis of preeclampsia is associated with increased risks of preeclampsia (overall and by preeclampsia subtype). The study population included nulliparous pregnant women in the Swedish counties of Gotland and Stockholm, 2008 to 2013, stratified by early pregnancy body mass index category. Electronic medical records were linked with population inpatient and outpatient records to establish date of preeclampsia diagnosis (classified as any, early preterm <34 weeks, late preterm 34-36 weeks, or term ≥37 weeks). Antenatal weight gain measurements were standardized into gestational age-specific z scores. Among 62 705 nulliparous women, 2770 (4.4%) developed preeclampsia. Odds of preeclampsia increased by ≈60% with every 1 z score increase in pregnancy weight gain among normal weight and overweight women and by 20% among obese women. High pregnancy weight gain was more strongly associated with term preeclampsia than early preterm preeclampsia (eg, 64% versus 43% increased odds per 1 z score difference in weight gain in normal weight women, and 30% versus 0% in obese women, respectively). By 25 weeks, the weight gain of women who subsequently developed preeclampsia was significantly higher than women who did not (eg, 0.43 kg in normal weight women). In conclusion, high pregnancy weight gain before diagnosis increases the risk of preeclampsia in nulliparous women and is more strongly associated with later-onset preeclampsia than early-onset preeclampsia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Our objective was to estimate the association between methadone and neonatal abstinence syndrome compared with buprenorphine using a probabilistic bias analysis to account for unmeasured confounding by severity of addiction.Methods: We used a cohort of live-born infants exposed in utero to methadone or buprenorphine for maternal opioid maintenance therapy at Magee-Womens Hospital in Pittsburgh, PA, from 2013 to 2015 (n = 716). We determined exposure and outcome status using pharmacy billing claims. We used log-binomial regression models to assess association of treatment with neonatal abstinence syndrome after adjusting for parity, maternal race, age, delivery year, employment, hepatitis c, smoking, marital, and insurance status. We implemented probabilistic bias analysis, informed by an internal validation study, to assess the impact of unmeasured confounding by severity of addiction.Results: Infants exposed to methadone in utero were more likely to experience neonatal abstinence syndrome compared with those exposed to buprenorphine (RR, 1.3; 95% CI, 1.2, 1.5). After adjustment, infants exposed to methadone were more likely (adjusted RR, 1.3; 95% CI, 1.1, 1.5) than infants exposed to buprenorphine to have the syndrome. In the validation cohort (n = 200), severe addiction was more common in methadone- versus buprenorphine-exposed deliveries (77% vs. 32%). However, adjustment for severe addiction in the bias analysis only slightly attenuated the association (RR, 1.2; 95% CI, 1.0, 1.4), supporting conventional analysis.Conclusions: Methadone is associated with increased risk of neonatal abstinence syndrome compared with buprenorphine in infants exposed in utero. This association is subject to minimal bias due to unmeasured confounding by severity of addiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Validation data are used to estimate the extent of misclassification in epidemiologic studies. In the Penn MOMS cohort, prepregnancy body mass index is subject to misclassification, and validation data are available to estimate the extent of misclassification. We use these data to estimate the association between maternal prepregnancy body mass index and early preterm (<32 weeks) birth using a semi-Bayes hierarchical model, allowing for more flexible adjustment for misclassification.Methods: We propose a two-stage model that first fits a Bayesian hierarchical model for the bias parameters in the validation study. This model shrinks bias parameters in different groups toward one another in an effort to gain precision and improve mean squared error. In the second stage, we draw random samples from the posterior distribution of the bias parameters to implement a probabilistic bias analysis adjusting for exposure misclassification in a frequentist outcome model.Results: Bias parameters from the hierarchical model were often more substantively reasonable and often had smaller variance. Adjusting results for misclassification generally attenuated the strength of the unadjusted associations. After adjusting for misclassification, underweight mothers were not at increased risk of early preterm birth relative to normal weight mothers. Severely obese mothers had an increased risk of early preterm birth relative to normal weight mothers.Conclusions: The two-stage semi-Bayesian hierarchical model borrowed strength between group-specific bias parameters to adjust for exposure misclassification. Model results support evidence of an increased risk of early preterm birth among severely obese mothers, relative to normal weight mothers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Gestational weight gain may be a modifiable contributor to infant health outcomes, but the effect of gestational duration on gestational weight gain has limited the identification of optimal weight gain ranges. Recently developed z-score and percentile charts can be used to classify gestational weight gain independent of gestational duration. However, racial/ethnic variation in gestational weight gain and the possibility that optimal weight gain differs among racial/ethnic groups could affect generalizability of the z-score charts. The objectives of this study were (1) to apply the weight gain z-score charts in two different U.S. populations as an assessment of generalisability and (2) to determine whether race/ethnicity modifies the weight gain range associated with minimal risk of preterm birth.Methods: The study sample included over 4 million live, singleton births in California (2007-2012) and Pennsylvania (2003-2013). We implemented a noninferiority margin approach in stratified subgroups to determine weight gain ranges for which the adjusted predicted marginal risk of preterm birth (gestation <37 weeks) was within 1 or 2 percentage points of the lowest observed risk.Results: There were minimal differences in the optimal ranges of gestational weight gain between California and Pennsylvania births, and among several racial/ethnic groups in California. The optimal ranges decreased as severity of prepregnancy obesity increased in all groups.Conclusions: The findings support the use of weight gain z-score charts for studying gestational age-dependent outcomes in diverse U.S. populations and do not support weight gain recommendations tailored to race/ethnicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To investigate relationships between weight resilience (maintaining a normal weight in a food desert environment) and fruit and vegetable (F&V) intake, attitudes and barriers.Design: Cross-sectional, in-person surveys collected May-December 2011, including self-reported data on F&V-related psychosocial factors, attitudes and barriers. Two 24 h dietary recalls were completed; weight and height were measured. Multivariable regression models estimated prevalence ratios (95 % CI).Setting: Two low-income, predominantly African-American food deserts in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.Subjects: Women aged 18-49 years (n 279) who were the primary food shopper in a household randomly selected for a parent study.Results: Fifteen per cent were weight resilient, 30 % were overweight and 55 % were obese. Overall, 25 % reported eating ≥5 F&V servings/d. After adjustment for age, education, parity, employment, living alone, physical activity, per capita income and mean daily energy intake, women eating ≥5 F&V servings/d were 94 % more likely to be weight resilient compared with those eating <5 servings/d (1·94; 1·10, 3·43). Across BMI groups, self-efficacy regarding F&V consumption was high and few F&V barriers were reported. The most frequently reported barrier was concern about the cost of F&V (36 %). Of the attitudinal F&V-related factors, only concern about wasting food when serving F&V was associated with weight resilience in adjusted models (0·29; 0·09, 0·94). In a model predicting consuming ≥5 F&V servings/d, driving one's own car to the store was the only attitudinal F&V-related factor associated with consumption (1·50; 1·00, 2·24).Conclusions: In this population, weight resilience may be encouraged by improving access to affordable and convenient F&V options and providing education on ways to make them palatable to the entire household, rather than by shifting women's F&V perceptions, which are already positive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Despite a call to study the effect of weight gain pattern on development of gestational diabetes mellitus, few studies have correctly adjusted for independent effects of gain after the first trimester. We used a conditional percentile approach to model the independent association between first and second trimester weight gain trajectories and development of gestational diabetes.Methods: We sampled women delivering singleton infants from 1998 to 2010 at Magee-Womens Hospital in Pittsburgh, PA, (n = 124,590) using a case-cohort design. We modeled weight gain trajectories in the first and second trimesters of pregnancy using conditional weight gain percentiles, and used multivariable logistic regression to assess independent associations of the trajectory with gestational diabetes. We studied associations separately by prepregnancy body mass index category.Results: The final cohort included 806 women with gestational diabetes and 4,819 randomly sampled women who delivered without gestational diabetes. In normal-weight women, every SD increase in weight gain in the first trimester above her predicted gain was associated with a 23% increased odds of gestational diabetes (95% confidence interval: 0.2%, 51%). Second trimester gain trajectory was not associated with gestational diabetes (odds ratio: 1.1, [95% confidence interval: 0.9, 1.3]) although the direction of effect was positive. This pattern was similar in obese class I and II but not in overweight and obese class III women.Conclusions: An upward weight gain trajectory in the first trimester was positively associated with gestational diabetes for women of most prepregnancy BMI categories. Second trimester weight gain trajectory was not associated with gestational diabetes for any group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To estimate the prevalence of filled opioid prescriptions after vaginal delivery.Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study of 164,720 Medicaid-enrolled women in Pennsylvania who delivered a liveborn neonate vaginally from 2008 to 2013, excluding women who used opioids during pregnancy or who had an opioid use disorder. We assessed overall filled prescriptions as well as filled prescriptions in the presence or absence of the following pain-inducing conditions: bilateral tubal ligation, perineal laceration, or episiotomy. Outcomes included a binary measure of whether a woman had any opioid prescription fill 5 days or less after delivery and, among those women, a second opioid prescription fill 6-60 days after delivery. Among women with no coded pain-inducing conditions at delivery, we used multivariable logistic regression with standard errors clustered to account for within-hospital correlation to assess the association between patient characteristics and odds of a filled opioid prescription.Results: Twelve percent of women (n=18,131) filled an outpatient opioid prescription 5 days or less after vaginal delivery; among those women, 14% (n=2,592, or 1.6% of the total) filled a second opioid prescription 6-60 days after delivery. Of the former, 5,110 (28.2%) had one or more pain-inducing conditions. Predictors of filled opioid prescriptions with no observed pain-inducing condition at delivery included tobacco use (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 1.3, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.2-1.4) and a mental health condition (adjusted OR 1.3, 95% CI 1.2-1.4). Having a diagnosis of substance use disorder other than opioid use disorder was not associated with filling an opioid prescription 5 days or less after delivery, but was associated with having a second opioid prescription 6-60 days after delivery (adjusted OR 1.4, 95% CI 1.2-1.6).Conclusion: More than 1 in 10 Medicaid-enrolled women fill an outpatient opioid prescription after vaginal delivery. National opioid-prescribing recommendations for common obstetrics procedures such as vaginal delivery are warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Gestational weight gain is often characterized by the total amount of weight gained during pregnancy, however, the pattern of gain may be an important determinant of health outcomes. The SITAR (Super Imposition by Translation And Rotation) model has been used to describe childhood growth trajectories and has appeal because of the biological interpretability of its parameters. The objective of this study was to determine the feasibility of applying this model to gestational weight gain trajectories.Methods: The study cohort included 3470 normal-weight, overweight, and obese women delivering at Magee-Womens Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1998 to 2010. We applied the SITAR model, a non-linear mixed effects model, to serial prenatal weight gain measurements in each pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI) category. We fit models of varying complexity, and chose the best-fitting model to describe the pattern of weight gain (by its absolute amount, timing, and acceleration) for each BMI group.Results: The most complex SITAR models failed to converge, but reduced models could successfully be fit by specifying fewer random effects and simplifying the modelling of gestational age. Best-fitting models for each BMI group explained between 95% and 97% of the variation in weight gain trajectories. Peak rates of weight gain were reached between the 20th and 22nd weeks, and were higher for normal and overweight women (0.59 kg/week and 0.57 kg/week, respectively) than obese women (0.46 kg/week).Conclusions: Following some modifications, the SITAR model can be used to characterize pregnancy weight gain patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Birth certificates are an important source of pre‐pregnancy body mass index (BMI) and gestational weight gain (GWG) data for surveillance and aetiologic studies, but little is known about their validity in twin pregnancies. Twins experience high rates of adverse perinatal outcomes that have been associated with BMI and GWG in singletons. Our objective was to evaluate the accuracy of birth certificate‐derived pre‐pregnancy BMI and GWG compared with medical record‐derived data in a sample of 186 twin pregnancies at a teaching hospital in Pennsylvania (2003–2010). Twelve strata were created by simultaneous stratification on pre‐pregnancy BMI (underweight, normal weight/overweight, obese class 1, obese classes 2 and 3) and GWG (<20th, 20–80th, >80th percentile). The agreement of birth certificate‐derived pre‐pregnancy BMI category with medical record BMI category was lowest among underweight mothers [75% (95% confidence interval 51–91%) ] and highest among normal/overweight [97% (90–99%) ] and obese classes 2 and 3 mothers [97% (85–99%) ]. Agreement for GWG category from the birth certificate varied from 57% (41–70%) for GWG >80th percentile to 80% (65–91%) and 82% (72–89%) for GWG <20th and 20th–80th percentiles, respectively. The misclassification of BMI and GWG was primarily due to error in pre‐pregnancy weight rather than weight at delivery or height. Agreement proportions for twins were not meaningfully different from the proportions in a comparable sample of singleton pregnancies. These data suggest that birth certificate‐based BMI and GWG data are prone to error in twin pregnancies. Those who use these data should conduct internal validation studies and adjust their results using bias analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study was to estimate whether maternal history of childhood maltreatment was associated with pre‐pregnancy obesity or excessive gestational weight gain. Pregnant women (n = 472) reported pre‐pregnancy weight and height and gestational weight gain and were followed up to 16 years post‐partum when they reported maltreatment on the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ). CTQ score ranged from no maltreatment (25) to severe maltreatment (125). Prenatal mental health modified the association between CTQ score and maternal weight (P < 0.15), and thus stratified models are presented. After adjusting for race, prenatal tobacco, marijuana and alcohol use, a one standard deviation (1 SD) increase in CTQ score was associated with a 45% increase in the risk of pre‐pregnancy obesity among the 141 women with elevated anxiety (≥75th percentile on the State Trait Anxiety Inventory) [relative risk, RR (95% confidence interval, CI): 1.45 (1.12, 1.88)], but was not associated among less anxious (<75th percentile) women [RR (95% CI): 1.10 (0.81, 1.51)]. Risk of excessive gestational weight gain was higher [adjusted RR (95% CI): 1.21 (1.07, 1.37)] with every 1 SD increase in CTQ score for anxious women. No association was observed for less anxious women [adjusted RR (95% CI): 0.89 (0.78, 1.02)]. Prenatal depression similarly modified the association between maltreatment and weight gain. Factors such as psychological status and traumatic experiences in early childhood may contribute to pre‐pregnancy obesity and excessive gestational weight gain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]