THE EFFECTS OF MATERNAL FASTING DURING RAMAZAN:

 

Ramazan is the ninth lunar month of the Islamic calendar. The study is conducted in Lebanon to analyze the effects of pre term delivery with women who fast during the holy month of ramazan verses who don’t fast .  A  total of 468 eligible women included all healthy Muslim women with singleton uncomplicated pregnancies who would be at 20–34 weeks of gestation at the beginning of the month of Ramadan irrespective of whether they would fast or not during the month of Ramadan. women were approached but only 402 agreed on participating in this research.  Although fasting during the month of Ramazan is compulsory for every muslim but there are exceptions. Pregnant women are allowed to skip fasting if she feels that this can cause problems to her or baby’s health. In this research women who intended to fast were assigned to the Ramazan fasted group and every fasting women was matched to a control non fasting women by maternal age +/-1 year, gestational age +/-2 weeks, parity and body mass index+/-2kg/m2.

 Analysis on 402 women showed no significant differences between the two groups of women. However the C section delivery rate was lower in the group of women who were fasting rather than who were not fasting. Although it is not possible to undertand the behavioral responses of different women. Also this study has their drawbacks since this study was done in Septmeber fasting hours may differ in different time zones.

Hence after evaluating the effects between the two groups of women fasted and not fasted we came to the conclusion that there are no major differences found in the occurrences of post term delivery and no increase in risk is noted for women who fasted during the holy month of ramazan.

 

Cites: This articles has been taken from the university library data base

http://libproxy.uhcl.edu:4779/doi/10.1111/j.1471-0528.2012.03438.x/abstract