Women who smoke during pregnancy and are overweight early in pregnancy are more likely to have children who become obese as toddlers and stay obese through their teenage years. [s]Reuters Health[/s] reports that the authors of the new study looked at how children’s body mass index (BMI), a measure of weight in relation to height, changed over time, from age one to age 18. They found being consistently obese was associated with certain exposures in the womb, and with having asthma and other problems in adolescence. Dr Wilfried Karmaus and colleagues from the [b]School of Public Health[/b] at the [b]University of Memphis[/b] analysed data from the [b]Isle of Wight[/b] birth cohort, based in the UK and originally designed to study asthma and allergies. Suggestions to start childhood obesity prevention very early on may actually mean that prevention needs to start with the pregnant mother, Karmaus said.
[link url=http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/18/us-obesity-trajectory-idUSKBN0ET2T420140618]Full Reuters Health report[/link]
[link url=http://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2014/06/03/jech-2014-203808.abstract?sid=da9360d9-8055-48ac-b8dd-ad95d7d247ef]Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health abstract[/link]