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The Association of Maternal Weight Status throughout the Life-Course with the Development of Childhood Obesity: A Secondary Analysis of the Healthy Growth Study Data

journal contribution
posted on 2024-11-27, 03:07 authored by Adriana ManninoAdriana Mannino, Ekaterini SarapisEkaterini Sarapis, Niki Mourouti, Eva Karaglani, Costas A Anastasiou, Yannis Manios, George MoschonisGeorge Moschonis
Maternal weight-status at various time-points may influence child obesity development, however the most critical time-point remains unidentified. We used data from the Healthy Growth Study, a cross-sectional study of 2666 Greek schoolchildren aged 9–13 years, exploring associations between childhood obesity and maternal weight-status at pre-pregnancy, during pregnancy/gestational weight gain, and at the child’s pre-adolescence. Logistic regression analyses examined associations between maternal weight-status being “below” or “above” the recommended cut-off points (WHO BMI thresholds or IOM cut-off points), at the three time-points, individually or combined into weight-status trajectory groups to determine the strongest associations with child obesity in pre-adolescence. Adjusted models found significant associations and the highest odds ratios [95% Confidence Intervals] for mothers affected by obesity before pregnancy (4.16 [2.47, 7.02]), those with excessive gestational weight gain during pregnancy (1.50 [1.08, 2.08]), and those affected by obesity at their child’s pre-adolescence (3.3 [2.29, 4.87]). When combining these weight-status groups, mothers who were above–above–below (3.24 [1.10, 9.55]), and above–above–above (3.07 [1.95, 4.85]) the healthy weight recommendation-based thresholds in each time-point, had a three-fold higher likelihood of child obesity, compared to the below–below–below trajectory group. Maternal obesity across all examined time-points was significantly associated with childhood obesity. Effective childhood obesity preventive initiatives should commence at pre-conception, targeting maternal weight throughout the life-course and childhood developmental stages.

History

Publication Date

2023-11-01

Journal

Nutrients

Volume

15

Issue

21

Article Number

4502

Pagination

18p. (p. 1-18)

Publisher

MDPI

ISSN

2072-6643

Rights Statement

© 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).