Determinants of prematurity in urban Indonesia: a meta-analysis

Abstract

Objectives: Indonesia is the fifth country with the highest number of preterm births worldwide. More than a third of neonatal deaths in Indonesia were attributed to preterm birth. Residential areas affected the occurrence of preterm birth due to differing socioeconomic and environmental conditions. Many studies have investigated the determinants of prematurity in Indonesia, however, most of them were performed in rural areas. This study is the first meta-analysis describing the determinants of preterm birth in urban Indonesia, which aimed to become the foundation upon implementing the most suitable preventative measure and policy to reduce the rate of preterm birth.

Methods: We collected all published papers investigating the determinants of preterm birth in urban Indonesia from PubMed MEDLINE and EMBASE, using keywords developed from the following key concepts: "preterm birth", "determinants", "risk factors", "Indonesia" and the risk factors, such as "high-risk pregnancy", "anemia", "pre-eclampsia", and "infections". Exclusion criteria were multicenter studies that did not perform a specific analysis on the Indonesian population or did not separate urban and rural populations in their analysis, and articles not available in English or Indonesian. The Newcastle Ottawa Scale was used to assess the risk of bias. This systematic review was registered in PROSPERO.

Results: Sixteen articles were included in the analysis and classified into five categories: genetic factors, nutrition, smoking, pregnancy characteristics or complications, and disease-related characteristics.

Conclusions: Our meta-analysis revealed adolescent pregnancy, smoking, eclampsia, bacterial vaginosis, LC-PUFA, placental vitamin D, and several minerals as the significant determinants of preterm birth in urban Indonesia.

Keywords: Indonesia; high-risk pregnancy; meta-analysis; premature birth; risk factors; urban population.