A high BMI during pregnancy could impact the child's IQ

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2021-08-20 01:00

International

Ryan Franco

Being overweight during pregnancy may have an impact on the child's brain development, according to international researchers. A study followed just over 11,000 children in Belarus, testing their IQ 6.5 years and 16 years after they were born and comparing their scores against their mother's weight during different periods of her pregnancy. They found each increase in BMI in the mother in the late stages of pregnancy was associated with lower scores on the intelligence tests for the children. Adjusting for other influencing factors including sociodemographic status and pregnancy complications produced a similar result. However, this is an observational study so it can't show mum's BMI actually caused the differences in IQ seen in kids

Media release

From: JAMA

Association of Maternal Prenatal Weight, Brain Development of Offspring

What The Study Did: This observational study, which used follow-up data from a breastfeeding promotion intervention in the Republic of Belarus, found that higher maternal weight during pregnancy may be associated with poorer offspring brain development into adolescence.

Journal/
conference: JAMA Network Open

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Harvard Medical School, USA

Funder: PROBIT was supported by grant MOP-53155 from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and grant R01 HD050758 from the US NIH. Dr Oken and Ms Thompson were supported by the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute. Dr Martin works in the Integrative Epidemiology Unit and was supported by grant MC_UU_12013/1-9 from the UK Medical Research Council and the University of Bristol. Dr Martin was supported by the National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centre at University Hospitals Bristol andWeston National Health Service Foundation Trust and the University of Bristol.

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