Congenital malformations obesity
A study finds that obese women are 11% more likely than those with normal weight to have a baby with congenital heart disease.
The more obese a woman to get pregnant, the more likely the baby is born with a heart defect, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
From data of births in the state of New York for a decade, scientists found that obese women were 11 % more likely than those with normal weight to have a baby with congenital heart disease. That risk among morbid obese women, i.e., those that weigh 45 kilos more than their normal weight, was 33%.
“If a woman is obese, you should lose weight before getting pregnant,” said Dr. James L. Mills, of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the United States. “That will not only improve your health and that of the child, but also reduce the risk of the baby developing heart defects,” he said.
The study used data from a registry of birth defects in the state of New York. Dr. Mills team identified 7,392 babies born with a heart defect between 1993 and 2003, and compared them with 56,300 healthy babies.
The 15 % of mothers of affected babies were obese before pregnancy and 3 % were morbidly obese. In the control group, these figures were 13 % and 2 %.
When considering other factors, such as age, ethnicity, education and maternal smoking, obesity remained associated with the risk of the baby developing heart defects. Overweight women, however, did not suffer this increased risk.
It’s unclear why maternal obesity is associated with congenital cardiac malformations in infants. Diabetes, which is closely related to obesity, increases the risk of birth defects in fetuses.
Anyway, the team looked at women with and without diabetes separately and together, and the excess risk that causes obesity remained stable.
The team said that “the wide range of issues” that can cause obesity, since alterations in sugar and fat metabolism to changes in hormonal activity could be intervening in the relationship studied.
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