Heart risk to babies of obese mothers

Obesity increases chance of congenital heart defect

Adding to a long list of maternal complications that are associated with obesity, new research has found that the more obese a woman is when she becomes pregnant, the greater the chance that she will give birth to an infant with a congenital heart defect. They study, in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition by researchers at the National Institutes of Health and the New York State Department of Health, found that obesity increases a woman’s chance of having a baby with a heart defect by an average of around 15% (with moderately obese women 11% more likely to have a child with a heart defect, increasing to 33% more likely among morbidly obese women).

Congenital heart defects are the most common type of birth defect, affecting 8 in every 1,000 newborns, and obesity during pregnancy has also been shown to be linked with other birth defects, such as neural tube defects (serious malformation of the spinal column).

Maternal obesity during pregnancy is already know to be associated with many complications such as increased likelihood of caesarean delivery, gestational hypertension,  preeclampsia and  gestational diabetes mellitus. Children born to obese mothers are also twice as likely to be obese themselves, and to develop type 2 diabetes later in life.

Sources: NIH news release, 7 April 2010, and CDC website.

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