Children born to mothers who gain either too much or too little weight during their pregnancy are more likely to be overweight or obese, a new study has found.
Putting on too few or too many pounds during a pregnancy "may permanently affect mechanisms that manage energy balance and metabolism in the offspring, such as appetite control and energy expenditure," study author Sneha Sridhar, of Kaiser Permanente's Division of Research, theorized in a Kaiser news release.
"This could potentially have long-term effects on the child's subsequent growth and weight," she said.
In the study, Sridhar's team looked at the medical records of children aged 2 to 5 born to more than 4,100 women in California.
They found that 20.4 percent of those children whose mothers gained more than the recommended amount of weight during pregnancy were overweight or obese, compared to 14.5 percent of those whose mothers gained weight within recommended guidelines.
Similar numbers arose when the researchers compared overweight rates for children whose mothers gained less than the recommended amount of weight during pregnancy. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_145685.html
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