A Study of the Association Between Prepregnancy BMI and Childhood BMI

Seo, Jae Min; Kim, Eun Ryeong; Lee, Won Uk; Kim, Ji Suk; Hong, Yong Hee

Abstract

BACKGROUND
Pediatric obesity is an important clinical problem because it may lead to considerable complications and cause social health problems as well as being closely linked to childhood and adult obesity. It has been reported that dietary habits, lifestyle, genetic factor, gestational weight gain, birth weight and prepregnancy obesity of mothers are recognizable factors for their children's pediatric obesity. The purpose of this study was to elucidate the influence of mothers' prepregnancy BMI on their children's BMI. METHOD: The study was conducted with 234 mothers, who had uncomplicated singleton term pregnancy in Sungae general hospital from January 2004 to December 2007, and their children. The data were analyzed by reviewing the mothers' chart which presented their prepregnancy BMI, gestational weight gain, age and calculation of their three to five year-old children's BMI. And they were also analyzed by t-test, Pearson correlation using the SPSS version 15.0 program. RESULT: Prepregnancy BMI was linearly related to offspring's BMI and percentile of BMI, but gestational weight gain was not related to offspring's BMI. If the prepregnancy BMI was high, birth weight was significantly high and the greater the birth weight, the higher the percentile of childhood BMI at the age of 3~5 years.
CONCLUSION
This study shows that it is the prepregnancy BMI, not gestational weight gain, that is strongly associated with pediatric obesity. Therefore, women's obesity control before pregnancy is crucial to prevent their children's obesity. Moreover, it is necessary that continuous follow up should be done for the assessment of the long-term prognosis.