A study conducted at Soroka Medical Center in collaboration with the Department of Public Health at Ben-Gurion University followed a quarter of a million newborns and found that children born to mothers who smoked during pregnancy have a forty percent greater risk of eye disease in childhood than children born to mothers who did not smoke during pregnancy.
"Smoking during pregnancy impairs the supply of oxygen to the fetus and is a risk factor for various obstetric complications such as miscarriages, placental problems, premature birth, and lower than desired birth weight. The dangers of smoking continue even after birth, when the risk of SIDS is about three times higher for children of smoking mothers compared to non-smoking mothers," explains Prof. Eyal Sheiner, head of Gynecology and Obstetrics Department B at the Saban Birth and Maternity Center at Soroka. In addition, babies exposed to smoking during pregnancy are at a higher risk of developing diseases later such as asthma, obesity, and learning difficulties such as ADHD later in life.
The multidisciplinary team of researchers from Soroka Medical Center and Ben-Gurion University included Prof. Eyal Sheiner from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Soroka, Dr. Erez Tsumi, director of the Ophthalmology Department at Soroka, and Dr. Tamar Wainstock from the Department of Public Health at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
The study included approximately a quarter of a million children up to the age of 18 who were born at Soroka between 1991 and 2021. It was determined whether they were hospitalized due to neurological morbidity during the period of the study. Children born to mothers who smoked had a ten times higher risk of developing various eye disorders compared to children born to mothers who did not smoke during pregnancy.
The findings showed that approximately 1.4% of the children exposed to smoking during pregnancy were hospitalized during the follow-up period due to eye-related disorders, compared to approximately 1% of the children of non-smoking mothers. Even after neutralizing variables such as maternal age, maternal diseases—diabetes or gestational hypertension—premature birth, or low birth weight, which may be risk factors, it was found that exposure of the fetus to maternal smoking is an independent risk factor for eye disease.
Prof. Eyal Sheiner, head of Gynecology and Obstetrics Department B at the Saban Birth and Maternity Center at Soroka: "It is difficult to estimate the prevalence of smoking during pregnancy since it is self-reported and not an objective test, so it is possible that the real data was underestimated. Moreover, the study did not examine the relationship between the amount of exposure to smoking (the number of cigarettes per day) and eye disease, but it is clear that any exposure, even "only" one cigarette per day, endangers the fetus. Therefore, the recommendation to stop smoking should be made even more strongly to pregnant women."
