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A new study, published online in the American Journal of Physiology and Endocrinology Metabolism, has found that maternal over-nutrition prior to and during gestation can cause pronounced obesity in the children. The babies born to such mothers have higher fat mass and smaller livers as compared to women who consume fewer calories during their pregnancies. However, the risk is negated, if the would be mothers switch to a less calorie diet.

 

The principal investigator Stephanie M. Krasnow, a scientist in the Papé Family Pediatric Research Institute at OHSU Doernbecher Children's Hospital along with her colleagues, used mice for their experiment. They fed female mice either a low-fat or a high-fat diet for six months and then mated them with male mice after 4, 12 and 23 weeks. The babies born to mothers who had consumed a high fat diet had more neonatal adiposity and smaller livers as against the babies of mice who were fed a low fat diet. Consuming a high fat diet before and during pregnancy, programmed the unborn babies to have an increase in the body fat and develop a small liver, irrespective of whether the mother mice was obese or not.

 

Earlier researches have shown that the nutrition that an unborn baby gets in the womb affects the development of organs like liver, brain and pancreas and can make the infant more susceptible to develop diseases like obesity, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes in their later lives. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in view of the danger posed to the health of the new- born due to maternal overeating, it is necessary to educate the women and the health care providers. Given the fact that almost half of the women belonging to the childbearing age in the U.S. are obese, this becomes all the more important.

 

Nothing is more important to a pregnant woman than the health of her unborn child. Therefore, highlighting the ill effects of a high fat diet before and during pregnancy will encourage many women to be cautious of what they eat. An important finding of the above mentioned study is that changing to a low fat diet during pregnancy can reduce the child’s risk of developing obesity and other chronic diseases later on.

 

References:

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