Caffeine intake during pregnancy correlates with low birth weight.

The New York Times (2/20, O'Connor, 1.68M) reports in its "Well" blog that "drinking caffeinated drinks during pregnancy raises the risk of having a low birth weight baby," suggests a study published Feb. 19 in BMC Medicine. The researchers reviewed "data collected from almost 60,000 pregnancies" and found that "for a child expected to weigh about eight pounds at birth, the child lost between three-quarters of an ounce to an ounce in birth weight for each 100 milligrams of average daily caffeine intake from all sources by the mother," even after smokers were excluded from the study. However, according to Dr. Verena Sengpiel of the Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Sweden, who was one of the study authors, the "findings were not definitive because the study was observational, and correlation does not equal causation."