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Last Updated: Nov 19th, 2006 - 12:21:58 |
29 Sep, (foodconsumer.org) - Gaining weight after the first pregnancy may pose problems when a woman gets pregnant for the second time, according to a new study. The research is the first study to directly link maternal weight gain to pregnancy problems like pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes, and stillbirth.
Previous studies have documented that overweight and obesity are likely to complicate pregnancy. The new study is the first of its kind to provide ample evidence that even moderate weight gain between the first two pregnancies is likely to complicate outcomes.
Dr. Eduardo Villamor of the Harvard School of Public Health and Dr Sven Cnattingius of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden examined the records of more than 150,000 Swedish women who gave birth to two children between 1992 and 2001.
For measuring weight gain, the researchers used body-mass index, or BMI as a starting point. The researchers measured the BMI of the women between their two pregnancies with emphasis on complications like high blood pressure, diabetes, risk of Caesarean delivery, and stillbirth during the second pregnancy.
"Both obesity and these pregnancy complications could have similar causes, so we have not known if it was actually the weight that was really responsible for the pregnancy risk," Dr Villamor observed. The findings of the study are published in the Sept. 30 issue of The Lancet.
Researchers found that even if a woman gained only one or two BMI units after her first pregnancy, the risk of gestational diabetes, gestational hypertension or giving birth to a heavy child increased by 20 percent to 40 percent at an average. the time between the first delivery and the second conception was two years at an average.
Women who gained three or more BMI units had a 63 percent greater risk of having a stillbirth the second time around. Moderate weight gain was caused a lot of complications. For example, the researchers said that if a women weighing 139 pounds gained around 6.6 pounds before her second pregnancy, the risk of gestational diabetes was up by 30 percent.
If the weight gain was 12.2 pounds then the risk rose to 100 percent. "One of the key findings of our study is that we found that weight gain between pregnancies increased the risk of these complications even in women who had never been obese or overweight," Dr Villamor said.
Conversely even a small amount of weight loss could dramatically decrease the risk of having a complicated pregnancy, the researchers said.
It is vital to understand the fact that obesity does cause a difficult pregnancy. The findings of the study are very relevant today as more women of childbearing age are either overweight or obese. The incidence of obesity among women in the U.S soared from 9 percent in 1960 to 28 percent in 2000. This rise was sharp in the age group of 20 and 39 years.
In Sweden between 1992 and 2001, the rate of overweight and obese women of childbearing age rose from 25% to 36%.
In a study published in Nutrition Reviews in May 2006, Henriksen T of the Division of Obstetrics, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Rikshospitalet Medical Center, University of Oslo, Norway said that overweight and obesity in Norwegian women accounted for a 5-fold increase in gestational diabetes within 15 years. Additionally there was also an unprecedented increase in the prevalence of large babies.
In an accompanying editorial, Gynecologist Dr Aaron Caughey, of the University of California described the study as groundbreaking. But he said it was not clear if losing weight before pregnancy would improve outcomes. "Villamor and Cnattingius report that women with a BMI decrease of more than one unit had lower rates of pre eclampsia and large-for-gestational-age infants," he added.
Dr Caughey said the findings should lead to more randomized trial to test if they held true across a wider spectrum, "With the recent sustained increase in obesity, particularly in the developed world, such interventions are likely to affect not only future pregnancy outcomes but also long term outcomes in women's health."
© 2004-2005 by foodconsumer.org unless otherwise specified
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