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Maternal body fat key in newborn weight

For at least some pregnant women, extra body fat – and not blood sugar levels – may be key to their risk of having a big baby, a study published suggests.

Among 472 pregnant women, those who were heavy before pregnancy or gained too many pregnancy pounds were more likely to have a large-for-gestational-age baby.

Experts have long known that women who have gestational diabetes are at increased risk of having a big baby. And the baby's weight is largely blamed on those mothers' high blood sugar levels.

The new findings suggest that for women without gestational diabetes, excess pounds really matter in the baby's birth weight, said lead researcher Dr Ravi Retnakaran of Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto.

"If we want to reduce the risk of having a big baby," he told Reuters Health, "the real gain would be in targeting the mother's weight."

Women start pregnancy obese already

Nearly half of pregnant women in the US may start their pregnancies already overweight or obese. Recent research has found, though, that about 0.5% will develop gestational diabetes.

The new findings, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, come at a time when experts are debating whether they should lower the threshold for diagnosing gestational diabetes.

Canada has yet to adopt that approach. In the US, the American Diabetes Association has endorsed the proposal, but the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists is holding off on a decision: it’s awaiting results from a conference to be held on the issue in October by the National Institutes of Health.

If the new criteria were adopted, Dr Retnakaran said, about one-fifth of pregnant women in Canada would be "labelled" as having gestational diabetes – more than double the current rate.

Obesity more important than glucose

But based on the current findings, he said, that label would not do those women any good – because it's weight, not moderately elevated blood sugar levels, that seems to be the "big predictor" of a big baby.

Dr Edmond A. Ryan, a diabetes researcher at the University of Alberta in Canada, agreed.

For women who do not meet the traditional criteria for gestational diabetes, "obesity itself is actually more important than glucose," said Dr Ryan, who wrote an editorial published with the study.

So helping women manage their weight – ideally before pregnancy – is the key, according to Dr Ryan. On the other hand, giving women the label of gestational diabetes could do more harm than good.

"I think we need to be cautious about the medicalisation of pregnancy," Dr Ryan said.

If more women are diagnosed with gestational diabetes, he noted, that will mean more women being referred to an endocrinologist, more women having to do daily blood sugar checks during pregnancy and more women on diabetes treatment.

Moms’ weight and baby size correlate

The new study's findings are based on 472 pregnant women who were free of gestational diabetes - though almost one-quarter had moderately elevated blood sugar levels.

Overall, 68 of their newborns were large for gestational age. There was no clear connection between elevated blood sugar and the odds of a big baby.

There was, however, a correlation between moms' weight and their baby's birth size.

For every kg a woman gained during pregnancy, her odds of having a big baby rose by 12%.

Pre pregnancy weight matters

Pre-pregnancy weight also mattered. For every one-point increase in pre-pregnancy body mass index, the odds of a big baby rose by 16%.

No one knows what the "ideal" weight-gain range is for cutting the odds of a big newborn. But Dr Retnakaran said that current guidelines from the Institute of Medicine (IOM), an advisory panel to the US government, are a "good starting point."

The IOM says that obese women should gain no more than 5 to 9kg during pregnancy.

That's less than the 6.8kg to 11kg IOM recommends for women who are overweight when their pregnancy begins, and the 11kg to 15kg recommended for normal-weight women.

(Amy Norton, Reuters Health, May 2012) 

Read more:

Excess pregnancy weight ups complications

Pregnancy

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