safety-lane.com07105
Smoking, Extra Weight in Pregnancy = Obesity Throughout Childhood
Women who smoke during pregnancy and are overweight early in pregnancy are more likely to have children who become obese as toddlers and stay obese through their teenage years, according to a new study.
Obesity rates have more than doubled among U.S. children and quadrupled among U.S. adolescents in the past three decades, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One in every three young people is obese.
The authors of the new study looked at how children’s body mass index (BMI), a measure of weight in relation to height, changed over time, from age one to age 18. They found being consistently obese was associated with certain exposures in the womb, and with having asthma and other problems in adolescence.
As Karamus explained, “We have an early persistent obesity group which starts very early and you can detect this group before the age of four years.”
Then there was a “delayed overweight” group of kids who became heavy a little more slowly, and an “early transient overweight” group in which kids were heavy as babies, but had a more normal weight when they were older.
The fourth trajectory included kids who had a normal weight throughout childhood.
“These four groups – we can detect them before the age of four years, this was one of the surprises we had,” Karmaus told Reuters Health. “The development is probably set in stone by the age of four years.”
About four percent of the children studied fell into the early persistent obesity trajectory, 12 percent were in the delayed overweight trajectory and 13 percent were in the early transient overweight trajectory. Roughly 72 percent of kids fell into the normal trajectory, according to findings published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
Having a mother who smoked during pregnancy was a strong risk factor for being in the early persistent obesity trajectory. So was having a mother who was overweight early in pregnancy, which suggests children may “inherit” obesity through the type of metabolism they acquire in the womb, Karmaus said.
Wang, from the University at Buffalo, State University of New York (Dr. Lane went here!), has studied childhood obesity but was not involved with the new research.
“Overall previous research has suggested that about one-third of overweight and obese children and about one-half of overweight or obese adolescents would become overweight or obese adults,” Wang said.
The new findings are consistent with those from earlier studies, he added.
SOURCE: Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, online June 3, 2014.
via Blogger http://bit.ly/1oL2bGK
Recent Comments