A new study suggests that moderate exercise during pregnancy is safe even for women with chronic illness. Black women are twice as likely to have premature or low birth weight infants compared with white women, but the reasons why are not clear, Dr. Suezanne T. Orr of East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina and her colleagues note.
Evidence on the effects of exercise in pregnancy outcomes has been mixed, and most studies have been done with white women, they add. And little is known about how much women with chronic illness exercise while they are pregnant, Orr and her team note.