ReviewBMJ open sport & exercise medicine2020
Spotlight on the fetus: how physical activity during pregnancy influences fetal health: a narrative review.
Review in BMJ open sport & exercise medicine, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Effect of exercise interventions on glycemic control in women with gestational diabetes mellitus: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Women's health nursing (Seoul, Korea) · 2025Pooled it
- Physical Activity During the Perinatal Period: A Fact Sheet for Clinicians.American journal of lifestyle medicine · 2026Review
- Maternal Exercise and Nutrition Function as Interconnected Regulators of Embryonic Organogenesis and Fetal Development.Nutrients · 2026Review
- Sedentary time during pregnancy and fetal malpresentation in the Japan Environment and Children's Study.Communications medicine · 2026Article
- Maternal Lifestyle During Pregnancy and Its Influence on Offspring's Telomere Length.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- "It's More than Just Exercise": Psychosocial Experiences of Women in the Conscious 9 Months Specifically Designed Prenatal Exercise Programme-A Qualitative Study.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- From Pregnancy to Breastfeeding: The Role of Maternal Exercise in Preventing Childhood Obesity.Nutrients · 2025Review
- Prevention of Pregnancy Complications Using a Multimodal Lifestyle, Screening, and Medical Model.Journal of clinical medicine · 2024Review
- Physical Activity during Pregnancy and Childhood Obesity: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Journal of clinical medicine · 2024Review
- Physical Activity Over the Lifecourse and Cardiovascular Disease.Circulation research · 2023Review
- It's time to increase physical activity promotion among pregnant women in France.Journal of education and health promotion · 2023Article
- Infant lung function and maternal physical activity in the first half of pregnancy.ERJ open research · 2022Article
- "Conscious Nine Months": Exploring Regular Physical Activity amongst Pregnant Women-A Qualitative Study Protocol.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- To Be Active or to Stop? A Cross-Sectional Retrospective Study Exploring Provider Advice and Patient Fears Surrounding Physical Activity in Pregnancies Complicated by Fetal Growth Restriction.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Mother's physical activity during pregnancy and newborn's brain cortical development.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2022Article
- Relationships between Objectively Measured Sedentary Behavior during Pregnancy and Infant Birthweight.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
- The first prior: From co-embodiment to co-homeostasis in early life.Consciousness and cognition · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Before and during pregnancy, women often aim to improve their lifestyle so as to provide a healthier environment for their developing child. It remains unresolved, however, as to whether physical activity (PA) during pregnancy poses a possible risk or whether it might even have beneficial effects on the developing child. There is increasing evidence that PA during pregnancy is indeed beneficial to maternal physiological and psychological health and that it is generally not detrimental to the fetal cardiovascular system and neuronal function in the developing child. This also led to international recommendations for PAs during pregnancy. In the current review, we aimed to comprehensively assess the evidence of beneficial and harmful effects of maternal PA, including high-performance sports, on fetal development. The different mental and body-based relaxation techniques presented here are frequently performed during pregnancy. We found a considerable number of studies addressing these issues. In general, neither low key, moderate maternal PA nor relaxation techniques were observed to have a harmful effect on the developing child. However, we identified some forms of PA which could have at least a transient unfavourable effect. Notably, the literature currently available does not provide enough evidence to enable us to make a general conclusive statement on this subject. This is due to the lack of longitudinal studies on the metabolic and cognitive effects of regular PA during pregnancy and the wide diversity of methods used. In particular, the kind of PA investigated in each study differed from study to study.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.