Chewing betel nut during pregnancy has been linked to low birth weight and a lower rate of conceiving male children, a researcher at Kaohsiung Medical University says.
Yang Mei-sang (楊美賞), a professor of nursing, said that babies born to women who chewed betel nut during pregnancy are 2.4 to 3.7 times more likely to be underweight, weighing less than 2.5kg at birth, with their average weights 89.5g less than those born to women who did not chew betel nut.
In addition, the research showed that babies born to mothers who chewed betel nut during pregnancy are significantly shorter and have a significantly lower probability of being male, when compared with babies born to women who did not chew betel nut during pregnancy.
Yang said that the research was conducted by surveying 1,264 Aboriginal mothers who gave birth at 10 hospitals in eastern and southern regions of the nation, and cross-referencing their questionnaires with the medical records of their babies, including 464 women who chewed betel nut during pregnancy and 800 who did not. The study’s betel nut chewers averaged 5.6 nuts per day.
Women who smoked tobacco and chewed betel nut during pregnancy are 3.3 to six times more likely to bear underweight infants, she said.
Yang said that chewing betel nut seems to be correlated to a lower probability in conceiving males, because in her study, betel-nut chewing Aboriginal women conceived male children 48.71 percent of the time, while Aboriginal women on average have a 51.33 percent probability of conceiving a male baby, which is a statistically significant difference.
Animal trials by some medical researchers suggest that arecaidine and arecoline, which are alkaloids contained in betel nut, are more harmful to sperm carrying the Y-chromosome than those carrying the X-chromosome, she said, which led to her to conclude that chewing betel nut during pregnancy might result in a higher miscarriage rate for male fetuses, and therefore a lower likelihood of conceiving males.
Although no definitive human study has been carried out on the specific interactions between betel nut alkaloids and conception, a recent study in Japan on tobacco alkaloids suggested that parents who smoke are more likely to conceive female children, she said.
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