High levels of stress due to rocket fire in southern Israel, especially in Sderot, may be the cause of unusual birth patterns observed by researchers from Ben Gurion University, Barzilai Hospital and the Gertner Institute for Epidemiology and Health Policy Research.
“The objective of this study is to evaluate the association between preconception and pregnancy exposure to stress as expressed by rocket warning alarms and the risk of spontaneous abortions. Kiryat Gat, located 23.4 kilometers [14.5 miles] from Barzilai Medical Center, was chosen for comparison because the two towns are at similar distance from Barzilai Medical Center,” the researchers noted in their paper, entitled “Prenatal Stress and Risk of Spontaneous Abortion”.
The study, the results of which were published Monday in Israel HaYom, showed a reversal of the typical male-to-female birth ratio. The research was conducted between 2001 and 2008, when Sderot was the primary target of rocket fire from Gaza, and nearby Kiryat Gat was out of range. Researchers found the boy-girl ratio in Sderot stood at 49.5 percent to 50.5 percent, the opposite of the ratio in the general population (51 boys for every 49 girls).
The study also found an increase in low birth weights, premature birth and microcephaly, or small head circumference. Baby girls born in Sderot had a 44 percent greater chance of weighing less than 2.5 kg (5.5 lb) at birth, and a 50 percent chance of being born before the thirty-seventh week of pregnancy. The risk of microcephaly was nearly double for baby girls, and 20-27 percent greater than usual for baby boys.
“Exposure of the mother to missile fire is a clear risk factor for low birth weight, premature birth and microcephaly among female fetuses,” noted Dr. Tamar Weinstock of Ben Gurion University.
The skewed gender ratio, however, is a little harder to explain. The study’s authors theorize it may have something to do with the different responses of the placenta in male and female pregnancies.
“Female fetuses are generally more resilient to stress,” says Eyal Anteby, the head of the Obstetrics and Gynecology Division at Barzilai Medical Center, one of the paper’s coauthors. It was suggested more male pregnancies may have ended in miscarriage as a result.
Other health-related side effects of rocket fire have been observed in children before. In 2006, Journalist David Bedein reported a sharp increase in the number of new cases of juvenile diabetes in northern Israel following the Second Lebanon War.
“The children who have come to us over the past weeks live in Safed and other communities in the Galilee-populations that have not shown such a high incidence of the disease in the past,” said Dr. Orna Dali-Gottfried, director of the department of pediatrics, juvenile diabetes and endocrinology at Ziv Medical Center, Tzfat (Safed). “Two sectors that were very prominent in the latest wave of illness are children from the Orthodox sector and Druze children, who experienced this kind of stress for the first time in their lives during the war.
“In the past, we saw similar incidents of illness after dramatic security events in the area of Kiryat Shmona, but this time, because the city was evacuated almost completely of residents in the first days of the war, the incidents of illness moved southwards, towards Safed, where the children experienced the full horror of the war. There is no doubt that we are continuing to pay a high price in the health of the children in the north.”
