Pregnant women with excess weight should beware. A new study has found that excess weight before and during pregnancy can have long-lasting impact on the health of the offspring of such mothers later in life.
It has become common for some time that excessive weight during pregnancy can lead to excessive weight in children and adolescents.
Now, researchers at the Hebrew University-Hadassah Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine and the Departments of Medicine and Epidemiology at the University of Washington, Seattle, have observed a direct link between these overweight mothers and higher likelihood in their adult children towards overweight and other health factors that include high blood pressure and excess sugar and fat levels in the blood.
The research was based on analysis of clinical information on 1400 people who were born in Jerusalem between the years of 1974-76. The data provided information, among other things on their birth records, including the weights of their mothers before and during pregnancy and the weight of the child at birth.
The investigators further collected current clinical data on the group under study. The date of all the women aged 32 collected the data including their weight, blood pressure and sugar and fat levels in the blood and body mass index (BMI).
The outcomes of the study revealed that a clear influence of the overweight of the mothers on the overweight of their children, affecting in turn other risk factors in adulthood. From these figures, it may be deduced that avoiding excessive weight in adulthood could potentially diminish those other risk factors linked with pre-pregnancy and pregnancy overweight.
Here, for instance, the children of mothers who put more than 14 kilograms (31 pounds) during pregnancy were measured to have a higher BMI as compared to those who were born to mothers who did not add more than nine kilos (20 pounds) during pregnancy. The results of hip measurements shows that the adult children of overweight pregnant mothers had hip widths nearly ten centimeters more than those who born to mothers who have not added extra weight.
Comparisons were also made on the basis of sugar and fat levels in the blood. These comparisons also revealed that those born to overweight mothers had harmful characteristics regarding their health and life expectancies as compared to those born to mothers who had did not become overweight.
Some other factors could also have an impact on the phenomenon, including analogous genetic traits of the mother and child or environmental influences during pregnancy, and this fact would require further investigation, researchers said.
"We know now that events occurring early in life to fetuses have long-lasting consequences for the health of the adult person," Dr. Hagit Hochner, the lead researcher of the project has been quoted as saying.
Prof. Orly Manor, who had worked on the project, said: "In an age of an 'overweight epidemic' in the world, it is important to know the factors that are involved in leading to overweight and other health risks. This understanding makes it essential that we identify those early windows of opportunity in which we can intervene in order to reduce the risks of chronic illness later in life."
The results of the study have been published in the journal Circulation.
–with inputs from ANI
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