Some women continue to smoke during pregnancy. Most people find it very difficult to quit smoking. A new study suggests that smoking during pregnancy can cause damage to blood vessels of a child.

The study was conducted by Dutch researchers reported in more than 250 children. If the baby is measured after 4 weeks of age, height and lung function. At the same time, parents completed questionnaires on factors such as smoking during pregnancy.

When kids are 5 weeks, the researchers used ultrasound, the thickness of the carotid and the flexibility to measure. Carotid arteries are large arteries in the neck, the blood to the brain.

Vascular wall of the carotid artery in children aged 5 years whose mothers smoked during pregnancy have a thickness of about 19 micrometers stiffer and 15 percent as mothers who do not smoke.

If both parents smoked while the child in the womb, most children have a carotid thickness of 28 microns and 21 percent stiffer than the children whose parents do not smoke during pregnancy.Such changes can damage blood vessels, which can impair the function of blood vessels.

“Researchers have found no negative effect, if only the father of a child who smoked during pregnancy, or if the mother does not begin to smoke until after birth. The results of these studies on the effects of smoking during pregnancy and could show exposure to cigarette smoke than later. The results of the research thinking that lead Smoking and pregnancy is not an independent role, even if exposure to smoking has many negative effects on health, “said lead researcher Cuno Uiterwaal, MD , PhD

Smoking during pregnancy is of course very bad for the mother and child. ”The results of this research, the argument can do to strengthen that women stop smoking during pregnancy. Many women who quit smoking when they know they are pregnant, but not all,” said Uiterwaal.

An accompanying editorial notes, almost 1 in 5 U.S. adults who smoke and more than half of the children who showed biochemical evidence of exposure to cigarette smoke.

“There’s is no safe level of exposure to cigarette known,” says Susanne Tanski pediatrician, MD, MPH, of Dartmouth College, and Karen Wilson, MD, MPH, University of Rochester.

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