Maternal Health and Health Behaviors During Preconception and Antenatal Periods of Mothers with Infants with Structural Birth Defects in Galle, Sri Lanka: a Case-control Study

Abstract

Introduction: Birth defects have become a serious public health issue in the world causing a higher morbidity and mortality among children. Identification of the possible risk factors, specially the modifiable risk factors for birth defects has become a top priority in order to prevent birth defects. Objectives: This study was carried out to identify the associations between maternal health and health behaviours of mothers during preconception and antenatal periods and the non-syndromic or non-genetic structural birth defects (SBD) among their infants in Galle district, Sri Lanka. Methods: A hospital and field clinics-based case-control study was carried out using 315 infants with non-genetic or non-syndromic SBD and 630 infants without any birth defect or any chronic disease condition. Data were collected through interviews with the mothers and through medical records of the mothers and the infants. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analysis were performed to detect the associates for SBD. p<0.05 was considered as the level of significance.