Thu Feb 21, 7:16 PM ET LONDON (Reuters) - Eating fish can improve a woman's
chances of having a full-term pregnancy and a healthy, bouncy baby, Danish
researchers said on Friday.
They suspect that fish, which is rich in omega-3 fatty acids, can increase
the child's birth weight by prolonging the pregnancy and preventing premature
births. He and his colleagues compared the diets of 8,000 Danish women during
pregnancy to determine if seafood had an impact on early births. "Low
consumption of fish was a strong risk factor for pre-term delivery and low
birth weight," said Sjurour Frooi Olsen, a researcher at the Statens Serum
Institute in Copenhagen. In the study reported in the British Medical
Journal, the women were asked how often they ate fish during their pregnancy
and whether it was in a hot meal, salad or if they took a fish oil
supplement. The researchers found that women who ate the most fish had fewer
premature births and smaller babies than those who did not. Pre-term
deliveries fell from 7.1 percent in women who never ate fish to 1.9 percent
in expectant mothers who ate fish at least once a week. Olsen said his
findings agreed with previous studies which found a link between fish
consumption and full-term pregnancies. Oily fish such as salmon, herring and
mackerel are rich in omega-3 fatty acids, which have also been found to be
effective in fighting depression and in inhibiting the growth of prostate
cancer (&yn=c&c=news&cs=nw">news</A> - <A HREF="http://rd.yahoo.com/DailyNews/manual/*http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=Prostate%20cancer&cs=nw">web sites</A>) cells.