Stockholm: Mothers who smoke during the early phase of their pregnancy might be putting their babies at an increased risk of fractures within the first year of their life. The findings which were reached upon by a Swedish study published in the British Medical Journal, however, showed no long-lasting effect on fracture risk later in childhood and up to early adulthood, suggesting that smoking in pregnancy only has a short term influence on bone health. Many studies have found a link between smoking during pregnancy and growth problems in infants. But evidence of the impact of smoking during pregnancy on bone health and risk of fractures in children at different stages of life is scarce and inconsistent.

So a team of researchers based in Sweden set out to study the impact of maternal smoking during pregnancy on fractures in offspring from infancy to young adulthood. Their findings are based on over 1.6 million people born in Sweden between 1983 and 2000 to women who smoked (377,367) and did not smoke (1,302,940) in early pregnancy.