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Patterns of adverse childhood experiences and associations with prenatal substance use and poor infant outcomes in a multi-country cohort of mothers: a latent class analysis.

Published version
Peer-reviewed

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Authors

Hemady, Chad Lance 
Speyer, Lydia Gabriela 
Murray, Aja Louise 
Brown, Ruth Harriet 
Meinck, Franziska 

Abstract

BACKGROUND: This paper enumerates and characterizes latent classes of adverse childhood experiences and investigates how they relate to prenatal substance use (i.e., smoking, alcohol, and other drugs) and poor infant outcomes (i.e., infant prematurity and low birthweight) across eight low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). METHODS: A total of 1189 mother-infant dyads from the Evidence for Better Lives Study cohort were recruited. Latent class analysis using the Bolck, Croon, and Hagenaars (BCH) 3-step method with auxiliary multilevel logistic regressions was performed. RESULTS: Three high-risk classes and one low-risk class emerged: (1) highly maltreated (7%, n = 89), (2) emotionally and physically abused with intra-familial violence exposure (13%, n = 152), (3), emotionally abused (40%, n = 474), and (4) low household dysfunction and abuse (40%, n = 474). Pairwise comparisons between classes indicate higher probabilities of prenatal drug use in the highly maltreated and emotionally abused classes compared with the low household dysfunction and abuse class. Additionally, the emotionally and physically abused with intra-familial violence exposure class had higher probability of low birthweight than the three remaining classes. CONCLUSION: Our results highlight the multifaceted nature of ACEs and underline the potential importance of exposure to childhood adversities on behaviors and outcomes in the perinatal period. This can inform the design of antenatal support to better address these challenges.

Description

Funder: Edinburgh Centre for Data, Culture and Society

Keywords

Adverse childhood experiences, Intergenerational transmission of adversity, Latent class analysis, Maternal health, Neonatal health, Prenatal substance use, Adverse Childhood Experiences, Birth Weight, Child, Female, Humans, Infant, Latent Class Analysis, Mothers, Pregnancy, Substance-Related Disorders

Journal Title

BMC Pregnancy Childbirth

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1471-2393
1471-2393

Volume Title

22

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Sponsorship
European Research Council (852787)
UK Research and Innovation Global Challenges Research Fund (ES/S008101/1)