The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has studied that if women give up smoking before pregnancy, life of the infant can be saved.

From past decade, it has been examined that women who smoke during pregnancy, have early births or their babies are born with low weight. Smoking is still a major reason behind the deaths of newborns. “We know about half of women quit when they find out that they are pregnant, but a lot of women are still smoking during pregnancy”, said Patricia Dietz, who led the study.

It has been examined by the Dietz and co-investigators from the US Linked Birth/Infant Death Data Set that 3.3 million births of lone babies that occurred in the United States in the year 2002 and out of these 386,000 babies had mothers who smoked during pregnancy.

Researchers have found that prenatal smoking caused 5% to 8% of early births and 13% to 19% of cases of low birth weight. Infants who died, 5% to 7% of deaths were related to premature births and 23% to 34% of deaths were caused by sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

It is believed that the mothers could have saved their babies, if they decided to quit smoking.