‘Babies born to smoking moms may suffer from deformed limbs’

The vulnerable newborns were also found to be 28 per cent more likely to have a clubfoot or cleft lip and 33 per cent more likely to have skull defects,the Daily Mail reported.

The study,claimed to the first comprehensive review of the physical effects of tobacco on newborn babies,also revealed that cigarettes raises the risk of gastroschisis which causes parts of the stomach or intestines to protrude through the skin — by 50 per cent.

The study,which looked at a total of 174,000 cases of malformation,was published in the journal Human Reproduction.

People may think that few women still smoke when pregnant. But the reality is that,particularly in women under 20,the numbers are still staggeringly high. Maternal smoking during pregnancy is a well established risk factor for miscarriage,low birth weight and premature birth, said Lead author Professor Allan Hackshaw.

However,very few public health educational policies mention birth defects when referring to smoking and those that do are not very specific — this is largely because of past uncertainty over which ones are directly linked. The message from this research is that women should quit smoking before becoming pregnant,or very early on,to reduce the chance of having a baby with a serious and lifelong physical defect, he said.