LACK OF CORRELATION BETWEEN MATERNAL BODY-WEIGHT OR WEIGHT-GAIN AND STILLBIRTH IN TWIN PREGNANCY

Objective: To study differences in maternal weight and weight gain for 48 twin-pregnant women with at least one stillbirth, versus 96 contro l mothers where both twin pairs survived the perinatal period. Materia l and Methods: In all, 48 twin gestations with one or both twins dead before or during birth (cases), in a defined region with 12 hospitals in southern Sweden between 1973 and 1989, were identified by using inf ormation stored at the Medical Birth Registry, the National Board of H ealth and Welfare, Stockholm. For each case pregnancy, two control twi n pregnancies were selected; matching criteria were same parity and de livery unit, and similar year of delivery (+/- 1 year) and maternal ag e (+/- 5 years). Results: Case and control women had a similar number of maternal body weight measurements during pregnancy, 8.9 vs. 8.0 (t = 1.5, p > 0.05). No significant difference between cases and controls was found regarding maternal weight ((x) over bar +/- SEM) at 12 week s of gestation (68.0 +/- 1.4 vs. 68.1 +/- 0.9 kg; t = 0.2, p > 0.05), or in weight gain/pregnancy week (0.59 +/- 0.28 vs. 0.61 +/- 0.19 kg; t = 0.8; p > 0.05). Conclusion: The results of this study indicate tha t repeated body weight measurements of the twin-pregnant woman are of very limited value in the identification of a twin-pregnant woman late r to face stillbirth.