Does a Mother's Weight Effect Her Unborn Baby's Chance at Developing Obesity?

Scientists recently found a link between maternal weight loss surgery and hereditary obesity, according to Healthline.com. The common conception is that obesity develops after birth through a combination of factors such as poor diet and lack of exercise, but researchers from Laval University in Quebec, Canada have discovered the effects of a mother's obesity can be spread to unborn children.

Researchers from Laval University observed the effects of maternal obesity on the genetic makeup of children, and found that children born after maternal gastric bypass surgery carry a different and less severe set of health risks than children born before their mothers undergo surgery.

Obesity during motherhood is risky for a number of reasons. It can cause birth complications as well as dysfunctional DNA, affecting an unborn baby's glucose regulating genes and thus putting the child at greater risk of developing obesity themselves, in addition to diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

"Maternal obesity is imprinting a type of mark that is put on the DNA of the children and that can then impact their gene expression, increasing the risk of chronic disease," said study author Marie-Claude Vohl, Ph.D., of the Institute of Nutrition and Functional Foods at Laval Unversity in an interview with Healthline. "There is an impact of obesity for the mother, the person that is obese. But there is also an impact on the next generation."

Dr. John Kral of New York's SUNY Downstate Medical Center, who co-authored the study, said that foetuses are "marinated, and they're differently marinated" depending on a mother's weight and health, according to the Daily Mail.

Researchers observed the children of 20 obese mothers, and compared their genetic makeup of siblings born before (BMS) and after (AMS) the mothers had gastrointestinal bypass or a biliopancreatic bypass surgery, both of which aid in weight loss.

Between the groups of BMS and AMS children, 5,698 genes were altered to control their expression, and the gene pattern of methylation pointed towards insulin resistance, which is a common cause of diabetes.

Although the study is very small, it is a step in the direction of determining which genes specifically are altered to allow obesity to be passed down to children. Genetic makeup dictates physical body type, but this study illustrates that the obesity of the mother can alter the child's genetic makeup during gestation.

"It's to early to do anything, but this study shows that a weight management program is important for a woman that wants to become pregnant," Vohl said.

The worldwide obesity rate has doubled since the 1980s, and around the world 40 million children under the age of 5 were overweight or obese in 2011, and more than one-third of American adults are classified as obese, causing many to label obesity as an epidemic.

The new study is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.