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Subject: AFRICAN WOMEN'S KIDS BIGGER

c The Associated Press

AP Medical Editor

BOSTON (AP) - African-born women living in the United States have bigger
babies than do African-Americans, a finding that researchers say casts doubt
on the role of race in birth weight.

The researchers said their study, published in Thursday's issue of the New
England Journal of Medicine, does not support the theory that genetic
differences explain why blacks are more likely than whites to be born
dangerously small.

Drug abuse, poor eating habits, having babies at a young age and many other
factors linked with poverty increase the risk of having small, premature
babies. However, these factors do not entirely explain why low birth weight
is a larger problem among blacks than among whites.

Even when blacks and whites have similar education and income, black mothers
are still about twice as likely as whites to have unusually small babies.
Therefore, some experts have speculated that some genetic factor linked to
race might play a role, just as it does in some other diseases that afflict
one race more than another, such as sickle cell anemia.

To study this idea, Dr. Richard J. David of Cook County Children's Hospital
in Chicago directed a study that compared the weights of 90,503 babies born
in Illinois from 1980 through 1995.

Most American blacks originally came from West Africa but are a mixture of
other races. Though individuals vary greatly, African-Americans are, on
average, about three-quarters West African and one-quarter European.

If African genetic heritage truly raises the risk of having undersize babies,
the researchers reasoned that African-born women in the United States would
have a higher risk than U.S. blacks, since they are ``pure'' African.

Instead, they found that the Africans' babies weighed closer to white babies
than to U.S. black babies. White women's babies weighed an average of 7.5
pounds, African-born women's 7.3 pounds and American blacks' 6.8 pounds.

However, the risk of critically small babies - those under 3 1/4 pounds - was
about the same for African and U.S. blacks. Their risk was about four times
higher than whites'.

``Our findings challenge the genetic concept of race as it relates to
birth,'' the researchers wrote.

An editorial by Dr. Henry W. Foster Jr. of Meharry Medical College in
Nashville said it is premature to look for genetic causes of weight
differences until questions about social and cultural issues have been
answered.

Prematurity is the most common cause of low birth weight. Babies born too
small are 40 times more likely than normal-size infants to die in their first
month, and also run a higher risk of mental retardation, blindness and
learning problems.

AP-NY-10-22-97 1801EDT