RESEARCH ARTICLE Prepregnancy Obesity and Risks of Stillbirth

Background We examined the association of maternal obesity with risk of stillbirth, focusing on whether the pattern of results varied by gestational age or maternal race-ethnicity or parity. Methods Analyses included 4,012 stillbirths and 1,121,234 liveborn infants delivered in California from 2007–2010. We excluded stillbirths due to congenital anomalies, women with hypertensive disorders or diabetes, and plural births, to focus on fetuses and women without these known contributing conditions. We used Poisson regression to estimate relative risks (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI). Separate models were run for stillbirths delivered at 20–23, 24–27, 28–31, 32–36, 37–41 weeks, relative to liveborn deliveries at 37–41 weeks. Results For stillbirth at 20–23 weeks, RRs were elevated for all race-ethnicity and parity groups. The RR for a 20-unit change in BMI (which reflects the approximate BMI difference between a normal weight and an Obese III woman) was 3.5 (95 % CI 2.2, 5.6) for nulliparous whit