Climate change-related exposures, low birthweight, and preterm birth: Overview of reviews protocol.

Authors

Elizabeth Ludwig-Borycz, Adrianna I Rojas, Dev Ram Sunuwar, Bryan Aaron, Gokulakrishnan Jayakumar, Cheryl A Moyer, Akbar K Waljee, Ana Baylin, Arun Agrawal

Published in

Environment international. Volume 202. Pages 109704. Jul 30, 2025. Epub Jul 30, 2025.

Abstract

Anthropogenic climate change affects the health of people mostly negatively. Vulnerability to climate change-driven health risks potentially affects all people in all countries, but differentially. The negative effects are especially pronounced for lower socio-economic status and marginalized populations in lower and middle-income countries (L&MICs). Among different population groups, pregnant women are particularly vulnerable because climate change risk exposures during pregnancy can worsen health outcomes for mother-infant dyads. Climate change may exacerbate adverse pregnancy outcomes such as preterm birth and low birthweight, two of the leading causes of under-5 mortality. This review of reviews (ROR) aims to summarize evidence from existing reviews on the impact of climate change-related exposures on low birthweight and preterm birth. In doing so, the proposed overview will identify: What climate change-related exposures are associated with decreased birthweight and preterm birth and characterize their magnitude. Overall, answering these questions will help identify possible risk mitigation options for the future. We used the preferred reporting items for overviews of reviews (PRIOR) guidelines to develop this protocol. We searched five (PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, Global Health, and Scopus) databases to identify relevant systematic review articles that assessed the relationship between climate change-related (temperature, heat, heat exposure, precipitation, air pollutants, fires, natural weather disasters) and low birthweight (LBW), birthweight in grams, or preterm birth as the outcome. Each systematic review will be independently screened, and only English language reviews will be included, due to the study team's linguistic limitations. Two independent researchers will screen abstracts, conduct full-text reviews, and extract data. Based on our scoping exercise, we expect to have around 12 reviews included in this ROR. A third researcher will reconsider any discrepancies. Literature screening will be conducted using Rayyan software and data will be extracted into an Excel file.

PMID:
40753755
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 04 Aug 2025.

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