A new steady has revealed rather a bad news for the blacks that they are twice as much as likely to give birth prematurely as compared to their white counterparts. The study also states that great likelihood of stress and depression in blacks may play a role in these. The research was conducted based on the birth-rate data that was collected over a period of 6 years in the Young Adults Study at Coronary Artery Risk Development. This included 5000 young adults from four major cities.

From this survey it was found that 555 women in total gave birth from 1990 to 1996. In these 555 women 18.1% of black women gave birth prematurely i.e before 37 weeks of gestation compared to only 8.5 percent of whites who also had this problem. Though the root cause for this problem has not been identified researchers say that depression before becoming pregnant may play a vital role causing these troubles. For patient on depression medication like Effexor ( venlafaxine ) , the results are also varies.