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06/12/2016

Caesarean Sections 'Affecting Women's Bodies'

A new study has claimed that Caesarean births are affecting human evolution.

The research by the University of Vienna, which has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that more women now need surgery to deliver a baby because of their narrow pelvis size.

They added that the number of cases where the baby cannot fit down the birth canal has increased from around 30 in 1,000 in the 1960s to 36 in 1,000 births today.

Scientists have said that this trend is 'likely' to continue, but not to the point where Caesarean sections will outnumber non-surgical births.

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Dr Philipp Mitteroecker, of the Department of Theoretical Biology at the University of Vienna, explained: "Why is the rate of birth problems, in particular what we call fetopelvic disproportion – basically that the baby doesn't fit through the maternal birth canal – why is this rate so high?

"Without modern medical intervention such problems often were lethal and this is, from an evolutionary perspective, selection. Women with a very narrow pelvis would not have survived birth 100 years ago. They do now and pass on their genes encoding for a narrow pelvis to their daughters."

"The pressing question is what's going to happen in the future?" Dr Mitteroecker added. "I expect that this evolutionary trend will continue but perhaps only slightly and slowly. There are limits to that. So I don't expect that one day the majority of children will have to be born by [Caesarean] sections."

(JP/LM)

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"A new study has claimed that Caesarean births are affecting human evolution."