THE HEALTH of a baby is affected by the health of the mother even before she becomes pregnant, according to research from Imperial College London.
A team studied 105 mother-infant pairs and found a link between the body mass index of a woman at the start of her pregnancy and the amount of fat in her baby.
“Our findings offer a biological mechanism that might explain why obese mothers have obese children,” said Prof Neena Modi, consultant neonatologist at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.
Using whole-body scans, the team measured how much fat the babies had and where it was distributed, with details of their study published in the journal Pediatric Research.
“All the babies in the study were in the normal birthweight range. The difference was in their total amount of adipose fat tissue,” said Prof Modi. “You would not pick up this difference by just weighing the baby.”
The babies from mothers with higher body mass indexes – a ratio between height and weight – also had more fat in their liver. Too much fat in the liver can lead to health problems. It was not yet clear whether this level of fat persisted into childhood and later life, she said.
Prof Modi is concerned that the current guidance on health during pregnancy focuses on weight gain during pregnancy instead of before pregnancy begins. While weight gain during pregnancy remains significant, weight at conception is really important, she said.
Prof Michael Turner at the Coombe Women and Infants University Hospital in Dublin agreed. He advised women to get in shape before they want to have a baby, warning that dieting during pregnancy risks starving the baby.
Prof Turner also urged Irish fathers to look after their health.
In a study of 167 fathers-to-be at the Coombe, it was found that half the men were overweight, and one in six was obese.
This was bad news for families, as obese dads are "more likely to die young, leaving children fatherless, and mothers to support the family single-handedly", said Prof Turner, one of the authors of the study, published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.
Obese men are also two to four times more likely to have obese children. “Men need motivation to start looking after their health. While women are likely to adopt a healthy lifestyle if they are trying for a baby, the same is not the case for men,” said Prof Turner.
This needs to change, he said, adding that health policy needs to encourage fathers, as well as mothers, to take care of themselves.