Asian, Black newborns more likely to have hypothermia, study finds
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Key takeaways:
- Asian and Black newborns are more prone to hypothermia than white newborns.
- Study included infants born at 35 weeks or later.
WASHINGTON — Babies born to Asian and Black mothers are more likely to experience hypothermia, according to a study presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting.
The researchers noted that hypothermia — defined by WHO as a temperature below 97.7° F — “often prompts thermoregulatory interventions and can lead to diagnostic testing and even escalation of care.” They noted that prevalence of hypothermia in well newborns is “less understood.”
“Many practices in pediatrics are based on clinical anecdotes or are simply what is historically done, without the necessary supporting evidence,” Rebecca Dang, MD, an instructor in pediatric hospital medicine at Stanford University and pediatrician at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital in Palo Alto, California, told Healio. “A large area that falls within this description is the practice of routine temperature measurement and management of ‘abnormal’ temperature values.”
For their study, Dang and colleagues sought to determine the incidence and characteristics of hypothermia among newborns in a children’s hospital nursery, “where thermoregulation is such a central tenet,” Dang said.
“With most of the U.S. studies on neonatal hypothermia conducted in preterm and very low birth weight infants admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit, we are excited to begin exploring the epidemiology and clinical implications of hypothermia in the less studied population of infants admitted to the newborn nursery.”
Dang and colleagues examined the electronic medical records of 23,549 infants born at 35 weeks or later and admitted to the nursery between 2015 and 2021, and found that 21.7% were hypothermic.
Compared with white mothers, infants born to Black (adjusted OR = 1.8; 95% CI, 1.49-2.33) or Asian (aOR = 1.46; 95% CI, 1.33-1.60) mothers had significantly higher odds of mild hypothermia, the study found.
“We were surprised by the magnitudes of associations between maternal race/ethnicity and hypothermia,” Dang said. “We believe the etiology of the noted racial disparities is multifactorial and warrants further exploration by confirming whether these findings also hold true at other institutions and by conducting qualitative interviews of parents and clinicians for further granularity on this important finding.”
“As a first step, I hope primary care providers and pediatricians first consider the hypothermia definition used and the clinical concerns that accompany that hypothermia definition,” Dang said. “We hope that this study provides insights into maternal and infant factors that place an infant at higher risk for hypothermia.”
As for the future, Dang said she is evaluating the clinical outcomes of infants with hypothermia.
“I hope that this will begin to answer when we should worry about hypothermia and what threshold or definition is most clinically relevant,” Dang said. “While these are just first steps as a single-nursery study, my larger hope is to provide evidence-based recommendations for temperature measurement practices, hypothermia definition and management of hypothermia in the newborn nursery.”
Reference:
Study: Hypothermia more likely in Black, Asian newborns. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/987354. Published April 28, 2023. Accessed April 30, 2023.