U.S. health leaders are crafting a plan on how to reverse the worrisome steady increase in babies being delivered prematurely, with one in every eight U.S. infants now born pre-term.

Premature babies-defined as born before the 37th week of pregnancy instead of the typical pregnancy of roughly 40 weeks -- face an increased risk of numerous medical and developmental problems.

"It's a trend that is very unhealthy, one that's going in the wrong direction and has been for quite some time, and that is very harmful to babies and to families--and costly in economic terms to the nation," Dr. Duane Alexander, a senior official at the U.S. government's National Institutes of Health, told Scientific American.
Alexander, director of the NIH's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, noted that several factors are driving the rise in premature births.

These include maternal health behaviors such as smoking and drinking alcohol, more in vitro fertilization pregnancies that increase the likelihood of twins and other multiple births, and maternal obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes.

More than half a million babies are born prematurely each year in the United States, and there has been a 20 percent increase in the rate since 1990. Acting U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Steven Galson, NIH officials and outside experts, including the infant health advocacy group March of Dimes, met in a conference mandated by Congress to devise recommendations to reduce premature births.

"We're really talking about a very, very serious health issue here," March of Dimes President Jennifer Howse said.

The pre-term birth trend also is being driven by Caesarean section deliveries, a study last month by the March of Dimes and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.

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