If you are overweight before pregnancy, your child is more likely to have a high amount of body fat by the time he is nine years old.

A study, led by Dr Catharine Gale and Professor Cyrus Cooper of the University of Southampton's MRC Epidemiology Resource Centre, published online by the US Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, has found that kids whose mothers had a higher pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI) or had fatter upper arms during late pregnancy, were significantly more likely to have a higher amount of body fat themselves at the age of nine.

Dr Gale explains, "A previous study showed that women who were significantly overweight during pregnancy gave birth to babies with a higher amount of body fat, and we wanted to see whether that relationship persists into childhood."

"We carried out a whole body scan of 216 nine-year-old children, whose mothers had participated in a study of nutrition during pregnancy. We investigated the relationship between maternal size in pregnancy, early growth and body composition at the age of nine years."

"We also noticed that children were likely to have greater fat mass if their mothers had smoked in pregnancy, if they had gained a lot of weight in infancy (especially boys), or had not been breastfed (especially girls)."

The increasing prevalence of childhood obesity in the developed world is widely recognised as a major public health problem,leading to higher blood pressure, insulin resistance, formation of fatty deposits in the arteries, and obesity in adult life.

The results of this research show that a mother's over-nutrition before and during pregnancy may have a persisting and long-term influence on her child's tendency to fatness.

Source: medicalnewstoday.com