Maternal obesity increases offspring birth weight and susceptibility to obesity. Adiponectin is an adipocyte-secreted hormone with a prominent function in maintaining energy homeostasis. In contrast to adults, neonatal blood adiponectin levels are positively correlated with anthropometric parameters of adiposity. This study was designed to investigate the role of adiponectin in maternal obesity...

OBJECTIVE The associations of prenatal exposures to maternal prepregnancy overweight and gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) with offspring overweight are controversial. Research estimating risk for offspring overweight due to these exposures, separately and concomitantly, is limited. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Prevalence of overweight and abdominal obesity at age 16 years and odds ratios (O...

Explanations for the trend of increasing childhood obesity have yet to be identified. The authors examined members of the 1958 British birth cohort (age 7 years, n = 8,552) and offspring (ages 4-9 years, n = 1,889) born to mothers under age 30 years to establish whether risk factors for childhood obesity have changed over time (1965-1991). The authors applied multilevel linear and logistic mode...

BACKGROUND There has been a rapid increase in the publication of guidelines for managing obesity and weight gain during pregnancy over the past five years. Healthcare professionals have identified multiple barriers to this area of practice, including the need to improve their communication skills, beliefs that pregnant women will have negative reactions to weight-related discussions, and a lack...

BACKGROUND Maternal obesity is increasingly prevalent in many westernized countries. Many studies report associations between maternal obesity and childhood wheeze or asthma but few have considered maternal obesity in relation to respiratory infections or symptoms other than wheeze during infancy. This study assesses the relationship between maternal BMI and reported wheeze, cough and respirato...

In pregnancy, uterine natural killer cells (uNK) play essential roles in coordinating uterine angiogenesis, blood vessel remodeling, and promoting maternal tolerance to fetal tissue. Deviances from a normal uterine microenvironment are thought to modify uNK function(s) by limiting their ability to establish a healthy pregnancy. While maternal obesity has become a major health concern due to ass...

Maternal obesity can profoundly affect offspring phenotype and predisposition to obesity and metabolic disease. Carefully controlled studies in precocial and altricial mammalian species provide insights into the involved mechanisms. These include programming of hypothalamic appetite-regulating centers to increase orexigenic relative to anorexigenic drive; increasing maternal, fetal, and offspri...

Department of Animal Science, Center for the Study of Fetal Programming, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071, USA *Author for correspondence: Tel.: +1 307 766 2709 Fax: +1 307 766 2355 [email protected] Obesity is increasing at an epidemic rate in women of reproductive age. Not only does obesity during pregnancy lead to increased maternal health concerns, it is also linked to an increase in ...