© 1987 Oxford University Press
research-article |
Assessing Sex Differences in Neonatal Survival: A Study of Discordant Twins
* Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Public Health Service, Centers for Disease Control, Center for Prevention Services, Division of Sexually Transmitted Diseases Atlanta, Georgia 30333, USA
We identified 1699 liveborn twin pairs, discordant for sex. In this study, which essentially controls for gestational age, race, and maternal risk factors among males and females, there was no significant sex difference (108 male deaths and 103 female deaths) in neonatal mortality (p > 0.50). However, there was a sex difference in intrauterine growth, since 53% of the males, but only 42% of the females had birthweights >2499 grams (p = 0.0002). A differential growth pattern can bias birthweight-specific assessments of survival. Such a bias may have been responsible for our finding that low-birthweight white females had better survival than did males in that category, since there was no such sex difference found among white twins born prematurely (<36 weeks gestation). Therefore, we recommend that accurate assessments of sex differences in neonatal survival should be on the basis of gestational age, controlling for race and maternal risk factors.
Received 1 August 1986
![]()
CiteULike
Connotea
Del.icio.us What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
![]() |
J. Katz, K. P West Jr, S. K Khatry, S. C LeClerq, P. Christian, E. K. Pradhan, and S. R. Shrestha Twinning rates and survival of twins in rural Nepal Int. J. Epidemiol., August 1, 2001; 30(4): 802 - 807. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
