Black women have a higher risk of pregnancy loss compared to White women, according to a study published this week in The Lancet, a peer-reviewed medical journal. Researchers in the United Kingdom analyzed data from 4.6 million pregnancies in seven countries, and the analysis suggests the risk is 43% higher for Black women.
"It's something that hasn't been highlighted before and something that we need to understand more about," Siobhan Quenby, a professor of Obstetrics at the University of Warwick and co-author of the study.
Quenby said the higher likelihood of miscarriage for Black women came as a surprise to researchers and is a big question that is "difficult to understand."
"All we can suggest is perhaps they have more of these risk factors," Quenby said. "We also think that maybe there's some social factors in certain societies."
Risk factors for miscarriages indicated in the study include increased age, body-mass index, alcohol consumption, smoking, being exposed to pollution and pesticides, undergoing persistent stress, and working night shifts.
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