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| |  Obese, Overweight Women Have Higher Risk of Giving Birth to Baby With Heart Defects ATLANTA -- October 2, 2009 -- A study of obesity during pregnancy and babies with heart defects in the United States finds that women who were overweight or obese before they became pregnant had an approximately 18% increased risk of having a baby with certain heart defects compared with women who were of normal body mass index (BMI) before they became pregnant. Severely obese women had approximately a 30% increased risk. The study, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Atlanta, Georgia, and published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, found a significant increase in several types of heart defects in babies born to overweight and obese women, compared with babies born to normal weight women. These included obstructive defects on the right side of the heart, and defects in the tissue that separates the 2 upper chambers of the heart The study looked at 25 types of heart defects and found associations with obesity for 10 of them. Of the 10, 5 types were also associated with being overweight before pregnancy. Women who were overweight but not obese had approximately a 15% increased risk of delivering a baby with certain heart defects. The study accounted for several important factors such as maternal age and race-ethnicity. Mothers with type 1 or 2 diabetes before they got pregnant, a strong risk factor for heart defects, were excluded from the study. “These results support previous studies, as well as provide additional evidence, that there is an association between a woman being overweight or obese before pregnancy and certain types of heart defects,” said Suzanne Gilboa, the CDC€s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities. "This provides another reason for women to maintain a healthy weight. In addition to the impact on a woman€s own health and the known pregnancy complications associated with maternal obesity, the baby€s health could be at risk". One important limitation of the study is that BMI is calculated based on self-reported weight and height, and weight may be underreported by women during the study interview. Although the study found an association between overweight and obesity and the risk of certain birth defects, further study is needed to determine whether body weight is the direct cause of these birth defects. The analysis included 6,440 infants with congenital heart defects and 5,673 infants without birth defects whose mothers were interviewed as part of the National Birth Defects Prevention Study (NBDPS). The NBDPS is funded by the CDC to collect information from mothers of children with and without birth defects in Arkansas, California, Georgia, Iowa, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Texas, and Utah.
SOURCE: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
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