The prevalence of obesity in pregnancy is rising exponentially; about 15–20% of pregnant women now enter pregnancy with a BMI which would define them as obese. This paper provides a review of the strong links between obesity and adverse pregnancy outcome which operate across a range of pregnancy complications. For example, obesity is associated with an increased risk of maternal mortality, gest...

Small size at birth has been associated with an increased risk of central obesity and reduced lean body mass in adult life. This study investigated the time of onset of prenatally induced obesity, which occurs after maternal feed restriction, in the guinea pig, a species that, like the human, develops substantial adipose tissue stores before birth. We examined the effect of maternal feed restri...

OBJECTIVE Offspring of mothers with diabetes have increased birth weight and higher rates of obesity in early childhood. The relative role of maternal glycemia and maternal obesity is uncertain. We therefore studied the impact of maternal glycemia and maternal obesity on offspring birth measures and early postnatal growth in nondiabetic pregnancies. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We studied 547 ...

Mothers with obesity or gestational diabetes mellitus have low circulating levels of adiponectin (ADN) and frequently deliver large babies with increased fat mass, who are susceptible to perinatal complications and to development of metabolic syndrome later in life. It is currently unknown if the inverse correlation between maternal ADN and fetal growth reflects a cause-and-effect relationship....

BACKGROUND Prenatal exposure to persistent organic pollutants (POPs), may influence offspring weight gain. More prospective epidemiological studies are needed to compliment the growing body of evidence from animal studies. METHODS Serum from 412 pregnant Norwegian and Swedish women participating in a Scandinavian prospective cohort study were collected in 1986-88, and analyses of two perfluor...

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to determine how the range of measured maternal glycemia in pregnancy relates to risk of obesity in childhood. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Universal gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) screening (a 50-g glucose challenge test [GCT]) was performed in two regions (Northwest and Hawaii) of a large diverse HMO during 1995-2000, and GDM was diagnosed/treated...

OBJECTIVE To examine the association between household food insecurity (HFI) and risk of childhood stunting and to determine whether this association is modified by maternal-child overweight/obesity. DESIGN Observational cross-sectional study. SETTING Data come from the Mexican National Health and Nutrition Survey (ENSANUT 2012 by its initials in Spanish), representative of rural and urban ...

OBJECTIVE To examine the association between maternal obesity and infant mortality, while including information about mode of delivery and interpregnancy weight change. DESIGN Register-based cohort study. SETTING AND POPULATION A total of 1 199 183 singletons, including 3481 infant deaths, from the Swedish Birth Register 1992-2006. METHODS Maternal body mass index (BMI) was obtained from ...