Paternal healthy lifestyle helps prevent preterm birth

Fathers with a healthy lifestyle appear to help reduce the risk of preterm birth (PTB) in their offspring, suggests a recent study.

A total of 810,475 couples who participated in the National Free Preconception Checkups Project in Guangdong, China, and had a successful singleton livebirth between 1 January 2014 and 1 November 2019 were included in this population-based, retrospective cohort study.

The investigators measured a combination of paternal healthy lifestyle, namely no smoking, no drinking, and healthy BMI (18.5–23.9 kg/m²). They estimated the associations between these healthy lifestyle factors and PTB risk using modified Poisson regression models with inverse probability of treatment weighting.

The risk of infants with PTB was significantly reduced among couples where the male partner had a healthy lifestyle score of 1 (risk ratio [RR], 0.94, 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 0.90‒0.99), 1, (RR, 0.94, 95 percent CI, 0.90‒0.98), and 3 (RR, 0.90, 95 percent CI, 0.86‒0.94) compared with a score of 0 (p_trend<0.001), following adjustments for maternal risk factors such as maternal age, maternal healthy lifestyle, and age.

However, the association of paternal healthy lifestyle with PTB remained significant only among a subset of males assessed for lifestyle factors >90 days prior to pregnancy.

Notably, when shifting the three paternal unfavourable lifestyle factors, population attributable risk estimation indicated that 2.37 percent (95 percent CI, 1.90‒4.65) of PTB cases were preventable.

“We did not find statistically significant additive interaction of paternal and maternal healthy lifestyles on risk of PTB (relative excess risk due to interaction, −0.04, 95 percent CI −0.09 to 0.01).

“These findings highlight the importance of including lifestyle modifications among males to improve pregnancy outcomes,” they added.