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We are happy to share a paper that was released last week in BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth along with some of our collaborators. We explored time trends in birth weight and in the rates of preterm birth and stillbirth. While the rate of preterm birth slightly decreased since 2007, the other parameters were virtually unchanged. When the mother was exposed to the COVID-19 pandemic during pregnancy, and especially during the last trimester, birth weight was increased by a dozen of grams. Our results align with existing literature reporting a birth weight increase during COVID-19 lockdowns. This might be due to the mother adopting a more sedentary lifestyle, working from home, exercising less and potentially changing her diet.
In the Figure, we see that birth weight mostly kept constant in all subgroups investigated. Still, we note consistent differences between some groups: for instance, neonates born in German-speaking Switzerland have a higher birth weight than those from the French and Italian-speaking regions.
Our year-long work on body height has been incorporated into a larger interactive data story on tamedia, followed by a larger interview on body height and its consequences.
In collaboration with colleagues from the University of Geneva we have published a new preprint in medXriv on "Spatial pattern of all cause excess mortality in Swiss districts during the pandemic years 1890, 1918 and 2020". Our study reveals heterogeneous spatial patterns of excess mortality in each pandemic year. Different socio-demographic ecological determinants, in each pandemic, might have favored excess mortality.
Group members Katarina Matthes and Mathilde Le Vu successfully presented their research on the longer-term effects of in-utero exposure to the 1918-1920 "Spanish flu" and on neonatal health after maternal influenza and syphilis infection in Lausanne 1910-1922 at the very stimulating and productive "Epidemics and their determinants: Past and present" workshop in Barcelona on 9. February 2024.
The deputy head of the research group, Dr Katarina Matthes, is officially starting her SNSF Spark project "Long-term Mortality Effects of In-Utero Exposure - The 1918/19 Pandemic as a Natural Experiment with Relevance for the Future?" on 1 February. More information on the project can be found on the SNSF website and in this publication in Swiss Medical Weekly.
In a new preprint published in medrxiv we analyzed monthly birth rates in Switzerland at popula-tion level up to 2023 & placed them in historical context. The study has attracted a considerable amount of media attention, with reports in the Tagesschau news broadcast and the NZZ am Sonntag, among others.
In a new preprint on medrxiv we show that height loss in adulthood is associated with health outcomes in later life in men and women enrolled in the 1946 Birth Cohort (NSHD).
In a new publication in Economics and Human Biology we show that the pandemic transitioned to endemic spread in several waves (including another strong wave in February 1920) with lower inci-dence and rather local spread until 1924 at least. At the municipality and regional levels, there were different patterns of spread both between pandemic and seasonal waves.
During his invited academic visit at the PANSOC at OsloMet in May 2022, Kaspar Staub gave a Lunsjpåfyll talk on "Excess mortality during past and present pandemics".
Please find a list of media coverages regarding our lab below.
Kaspar Staub was a guest on episode 83 of the well-known podcast series "Infectious Historians".
Recorded plenary talk by Kaspar Staub during the SSPH+ Summer School Lugano (23.8.2021): "Learning from the past or forgetting the past? Past and present pan-demics and how to prepare for future challenges"