This investigation was carried out in 3 Dublin maternity hospitals-Rotunda, National Maternity and Coombe hospitals-and covered one year from October 1957 which included the outbreak of Asian influenza. All women attending the antenatal clinics were asked if they had had an attack of influenza during their pregnancy. For each woman who had had influenza another woman attending the clinic on the same day and at about the same stage of pregnancy who had not been attacked was taken as a control. Each group finally consisted of 663 women. Among the mothers who had had influenza 3.6% of the births were malformed compared with 1-5 among the controls. The distributions of abnormalities between the 3 hospitals were different; in the Rotunda 2.7% of the births of both groups of patients were deformed, in the National Maternity hospital 3.9% of the mothers who had had influenza and 1.0% of the controls had babies with deformities and in the Coombe hospital the proportion of defective babies was 4.4% for the mothers who had had influenza and 0.7% for the controls. The abnormalities were almost entirely of the central nervous system and anencephaly was the commonest. The distribution of abnormalities by the period of pregnancy when influenza was contracted was 7.4% for the first, 4.3% for the second and 2.0% for the third trimester. The infected mothers had 18 stillbirths (6 malformed), and the controls had 19 (3 malformed). The number of babies with a birth weight under 2, 500 gm. was 60 (14 malformed) for the group of mothers who had influenza and 52 (4 malformed) for the control group. The authors briefly discuss the mechanics by which the influenza virus can damage the embryo.

[For a previous study by the authors, see this Bulletin, 1955, v. 30, 390.] W. J. Martin

See also p. 228, VIGLIANI & FINULLI, [Increased Resistance of Silicotics to A/Asian Virus Infection.