MATERNAL OBESITY could have a direct impact on the immune response of the child, a Dutch study has found. A survey of just under 5,000 mothers and their infants has found that mothers with an unhealthy body mass index (BMI) value reported higher levels of wheezing in their infants.
The study found that 10 per cent of the infants were reported by their mothers to have difficulty breathing, a figure considered average. However, the mothers who noticed wheezing in their children were far more likely to have a higher-than-recommended pre-pregnancy BMI.
“In current societies there are a lot of allergies and we’ve no real clue why there’s been an increase. At the same time there’s an increase in weight in society,” said Dr Annick de Vries, one of the researchers from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.
This study is one of the first to provide evidence that the weight of the mother before pregnancy can potentially affect the offspring’s immune responses, according to Dr de Vries who spoke yesterday at Trinity College Dublin. Dr de Vries was attending the 17th annual international conference of the Psychoneuroimmunology Research Society.
The study, funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development, found that maternal weight had a clear impact on the chances of wheezing in infants even when allowing for other factors that contribute to wheezing in children. Whether a mother is asthmatic or a smoker, as well as whether a child is breastfed, are all factors thought to affect the development of wheezing in babies.
Socio-economic status was not a cause for the findings, according to Dr de Vries. “It is not the case that the increased incidence of wheezing was related to poverty.”