teenage pregnancy affect obstetric outcomes?

The studies concerning teenage pregnancy outcomes are contradictory; some revealed excess risk of poor outcomes and others didn't. In addition, studies in Arab countries including Saudi Arabia, are very deficient The objective of this study was to determine the frequency of teenage pregnancy and to compare the obstetric outcome of teenage pregnant women less than 20 years with that of older [20-29 years]. A retrospective comparative study was carried out in Northern borders province, Saudi Arabia during the period from January, 1, 2005 to December, 31, 2006. We compared the obstetric outcomes of 118 nulliparous women aged less than 20 years [n=118] who had singleton births during the study period, with that of 432 nulliparous women aged 20-29 years who had singleton births during the same period [control group]. Data were collected from family files, maternity cards and hospital files. Appropriate statistical tests were used to compare between the two groups. The incidence of teenage pregnancy was 3.7% of all live births. Both groups were similar regarding maternal education and occupation, and time of start of antenatal care booking and number of antenatal care visits. Antenatal complications like pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes, anemia, antepartum hemorrhage and urinary tract infections were similar in study and control groups. Also, the two groups showed no significant difference regarding instrumental vaginal delivery, cesarean section, low birth weight, preterm delivery, posterm delivery, Apgar score at 5 minute and need of newborn babies to admission to neonatal intensive care units. Teenage pregnancy is not associated with bad obstetric outcomes when adequate antenatal care is received

Seroprevalence of hepatitis A virus in children

Earlier surveys in Saudi Arabia indicated that HAV is endemic in Saudi Arabia, however improvement of socioeconomic conditions in this country has led to changes in the epidemiological pattern of hepatitis A and made a determination of the seroprevalence of this disease advisable. To determine the current seroprevalence of antibodies against hepatitis A virus in selected group of children aged 1-6 years living in Northern borders region, Saudi Arabia, and to identify risk factors for infection. A cross-sectional seroepidemiological study of children 1-6 years of age [n= 950] attending 10 randomly selected primary health care centers [5 urban and 5 rural] was done. The sample size was distributed between urban and rural proportionally. Verbal informed consent was taken from parents or guardian of the recruited child. The parents of all children were subjected to a questionnaire included sociodemographic and housing environmental data. The determination of anti-HAV antibodies was carried out by ELISA-test. The prevalence of HAV-IgG was 33.8% overall, 35.5% among males and 32.0% among females with no statistically significant difference. There was a significant increase in the HAV-IgG with increasing age from 18.9% at [1-<3 years], to 44.1% at [5-<7 years. Rural children were at more risk than urban ones to have exposure to hepatitis A infection. A higher proportion of non Saudi children were anti-HAV seropositive than Saudi ones [43.1% and 32.7% respectively]. The anti-HAV seroprevalence was not associated with family size, but was related to parent's education, occupation, family income and crowding index. Other factors associated with increased risk of HAV seropositivity included non availability of municipal treated water, non hygienic refuse disposal and low social score. From multivariate logistic regression analysis, increasing age, rural residence, non Saudi nationality, and non availability of safe municipal water source were the most important independent predictors for HAV seropositivity in studied children. This study showed a clear decrease in hepatitis A prevalence in the studied children particularly in urban and indicates that a transition may be underway to intermediate endemicity and consequently possible shift of the risk to the adult age with increased morbidity. So, we recommend including Hepatitis A in the schedule of routine childhood vaccinations