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Overweight women more likely to lose healthy babies
Sophie Goodchild, Health Editor13.11.08
OVERWEIGHT women are more likely to miscarry healthy babies than women of a normal weight, according to a study out today.
Those whose body mass index was greater than 25 were found to be more likely to lose healthy babies in early pregnancy. A BMI of 18 to 24.9 is considered normal; above 25 is overweight; and over 30 is obese.
The study, led by Dr Inna Landres from Stanford University School of Medicine in California, examined DNA from foetuses that were miscarried in the first eight weeks of pregnancy among 204 women. All the women had attended an academic centre between 1999 and 2008 for fertility counselling.
Experts looked at the foetal tissue to work out which foetuses had chromosomal abnormalities - a major cause of miscarriage. The rest of the foetuses were regarded as normal.
The research found that 53 per cent of infants miscarried by overweight women were normal. Among women with a healthy weight, 37 per cent of miscarried babies were healthy.
Dr Landres said possible causes were insulin resistance, which affects a woman's hormonal state at the time of pregnancy. Levels of oestrogen and androgen, which are raised in overweight women, may also play a part.
Reader views (1)
Sorry, but I have to call bunco on the titles of these news stories. If you don't know how the women became obese or if they were obese before the pregnancy, and if not, when the weight spike came, or other factors, then fat can't be blamed for the miscarriages. One also has to consider that fat women are discriminated against and picked on even more than fat men, which can add to their stress levels. Also, the age factors in as well. If the fat women were mostly over 30, which is very likely, age could have been a greater factor than fat. So the information being given to the public is incomplete and looks like yet another misinformation campaign to get people to be overly worried about their weight at a time when they should be more concerned about their nutrition. A woman needs to be technically over ideal weight to have enough excess to give birth to a healthy child and then to breastfeed them. How is it that overweight women are less likely to give birth prematurely, and yet more likely to miscarry? ... Sounds like someone's taking a study based on a limited area, publishing incomplete data, and trying to make it sound like a global truth to me.
- Nicole, Haifa, Israel
