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Associations between maternal syphilis infection during pregnancy and low birth weight and preterm birth: a prospective cohort study

  • Maternal-Fetal Medicine
  • Published:
Archives of Gynecology and Obstetrics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Background

In recent years, syphilis is still the most common sexually transmitted disease worldwide. Pregnant women infected with syphilis can transmit it to the fetus in utero through mother-to-child transmission, which can directly lead to adverse pregnancy outcomes. The aim of this study was to investigate the associations between maternal syphilis infection and low birth weight and preterm birth in offspring.

Methods

Multinomial logistic regression model was used to analyze the associations between maternal syphilis infection and low birth weight and preterm birth, and to explore its stability through subgroup analysis.

Results

A total of 34,074 subjects were included in the study. After adjusting for potential confounders, maternal syphilis infection during pregnancy was associated with a 2.60-fold (95% CI 1.83–3.69) increased risk of low birth weight and a 1.91-fold (95% CI 1.35–2.69) increased risk of preterm birth. Subgroup analysis showed that the association was stable.

Conclusion

We found that maternal syphilis infection during pregnancy was significantly associated with an increased risk of low birth weight and preterm birth. The implementation of reasonable syphilis screening and standardized treatment and follow-up of pregnant syphilis may have important practical significance in reducing the low birth weight and preterm birth rate in offspring.

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Availability of data and materials

The data underlying this article will be shared on reasonable request to the corresponding author.

Code availability

Not applicable.

Abbreviations

CIs:

Confidence intervals

CS:

Congenital syphilis

MTCH:

Mother-to-child transmission

ORs:

Odds ratios

STI:

Sexually transmitted infections

TP:

Treponema pallidum

TPPA:

Treponema pallidum particle agglutination

TRUST:

Toluidine red unheated serum test

WHA:

World Health Assembly

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank all the medical staff at the Hunan Provincial Maternal and Child Health Care Hospital and parents for participating in the study.

Funding

This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation Program of China (82073653 and 81803313), Hunan Outstanding Youth Fund Project (2022JJ10087), National Key Research and Development Project (2018YFE0114500), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2020M682644), Hunan Provincial Science and Technology Talent Support Project (2020TJ-N07), Hunan Provincial Key Research and Development Program (2018SK2063), Open Project from NHC Key Laboratory of Birth Defect for Research and Prevention (KF2020006), Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province (2018JJ2551 and 2022JJ40207), Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangdong Province (2020A1414010152), Research Innovation Project of Central South University (2023ZZTS0907), and Changsha Municipal Natural Science Foundation (kq2202470).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Epidemiology and Health Statistics, Xiangya School of Public Health, Central South University, No. 172 Tongzipo Road, Yuelu District, Changsha, 410013, Hunan, China

    Mengting Sun, Manjun Luo, Tingting Wang, Taowei Zhong, Qian Chen, Hanjun Liu, Jiapeng Tang, Liuxuan Li & Jiabi Qin

  2. NHC Key Laboratory of Birth Defect for Research and Prevention, Hunan Provincial Maternal and Child Health Care Hospital, Changsha, Hunan, China

    Tingting Wang & Jiabi Qin

  3. Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Clinical Epidemiology, Hunan, China

    Jiabi Qin

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  1. Mengting Sun
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Contributions

MTS drafted the original manuscript. MTS, MJL, and TTW analyzed and interpreted the data. MTS, MJL, TTW, TWZ, QC, HJL, JPT, and LXL were responsible for the collection of field data of epidemiological investigation and follow-up work. JBQ designed the study and coordinated each research stage, reviewed and modified the final draft, and approved the submission of the final draft. The author(s) read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jiabi Qin.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no competing interest.

Ethics approval

This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Xiangya School of Public Health, Central South University, and registered in the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry (Registration number: ChiCTR1800016635). All participants provided written informed consent prior to participating in our study, and this study complied with the ethical principles of the Helsinki Declaration of the World Medical Association.

Consent to participate

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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The authors affirm that human research participants provided informed consent regarding publishing their data.

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Sun, M., Luo, M., Wang, T. et al. Associations between maternal syphilis infection during pregnancy and low birth weight and preterm birth: a prospective cohort study. Arch Gynecol Obstet (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00404-023-07321-0

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