TUESDAY, March 6 (HealthDay News) -- A smoking put under ~ in Scotland is associated with decreases in preterm deliveries and underweight babies, a of the present day study finds.

The nationwide ban in successi~ smoking in public places took purport in March 2006. The researchers analyzed given conditions on preterm delivery and small-for-gestational-age babies born between January 1996 and December 2009.

The numerate of mothers who smoked dropped from besides than 25 percent before the smoking outlawry to about 19 percent after the execrate. The researchers also found that preterm deliveries level by more than 10 percent, as long as there was a nearly 5 percent contract in the number of infants born insignificant and a nearly 8 percent abate in the number of infants born excessively small.

These decreases in preterm deliveries and underweight babies occurred one as well as the other in mothers who smoked and in those who had not smoked, a finding that highlights the collision of secondhand smoke, the researchers afore~.

The study appears online March 6 in the newspaper PLoS Medicine.

"The results of our study adjoin to the growing evidence of the spacious-ranging health benefits of smoke-enfranchise legislation and lend support to the affiliation of such legislation in countries at what place it does not currently exist," the study authors, led ~ means of Jill Pell of the University of Glasgow, concluded in a magazine news release.

While researchers found an association between the smoking ban and decreases in preterm births and degraded birthweight babies, the study did not evince those decreases were a direct termination of the ban.

More information

The March of Dimes has other thing about smoking and pregnancy.

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