Obese women more likely to have babies with birth defects, according to study
Women who are obese at the moment they become pregnant are more likely to have a baby with serious birth defects, The Guardian reports.
The study used data from over 1,2 million live births in Sweden between 2001 and 2014 and discovered that 43,550 babies (3.5% of all births) had major congenital malformations. When compared with mothers in the healthy weight range, which had a 3.4% risk of defects, the risk was 3.5% for overweight mothers, 3.8 for obese mothers, and increased to even to 4.2% and 4.7% for higher categories of obesity.
“In terms of risk, it is better to be normal weight than overweight and much better to be normal weight than obese,” says Martin Neovius, an epidemiologist at the Karolinska Institute and the study’s senior author.
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According to the study, the health problems experienced by babies born to obese mothers include congenital heart defects, anomalies of the digestive system and malformations of genital organs or limbs, which lead to the authors writing that “Efforts should be made to encourage women of reproductive age to adopt a healthy lifestyle and to obtain a normal body weight before conception.”
The categories were based on the body mass index (BMI), where a healthy weight was defined as a BMI between 18.5 and 24, overweight being 25 to 29, and obese being 30 or over.
Nevertheless, the study suggests that other factors can also influence the birth defects of babies, such as altered hormone levels, a less efficient delivery of nutrients through the placenta and higher levels of inflammation.
However, obesity faces many other risks besides potential birth defects. “Severe obesity confers excess risk for so many other negative outcomes for pregnancy: pre-eclampsia, diabetes, still-birth,” Neovius said. “It’s really not a good place to be.”
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