In a study
published in April 2013 in PLoS ONE journal, a team from the Chinese Nanjing
Medical University found a
direct correlation between mother’s pre-pregnancy weight and her child’s. That’s
to say, overweight or obese mothers tend to have overweight or large children
while underweight mothers tend to have underweight or small children.
These
results were based on a systematic literature review, where the authors
collected 45 studies concerned with maternal BMI [weight (Kg)/height (m²)] and
their baby’s weight and size. They later on combined the results these studies
provided to get an overall estimation. They suggested that these results can be
due to “programming” the fetus in the womb to the amount of food available,
this programming can affect the physiology of the infant or his/her metabolism,
even could some genetic changes to how the body can process and use food. These
results are, of course, not absolute: age of the mother could affect the infant’s
weight and size, her ethnicity, genetics, having some diseases such as
pregnancy or diabetes among many other factors. However, they are still of very
high value: with the obesity epidemic we are all aware of, how will that affect
future generations? Will it be even worse? The authors suggested that trying to
correct the mother’s weight before or during pregnancy could help control the infant’s
weight: what measures are they proposing? What is the chance of succeeding? And
what are the implications of such success?
One last question
to address: have they in the pooled
studies checked the effect of pre-pregnancy weight of the same woman during
prior or subsequent pregnancies and that of the kids?
Citation: Yu Z, Han S, Zhu J, Sun X, Ji C, et al.
(2013) Pre-Pregnancy Body Mass Index in Relation to Infant Birth Weight
and Offspring Overweight/Obesity: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.
PLoS ONE 8(4):
e61627.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0061627
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