After combing the literature for an explanation, Larson Ode and researchers at the University of Minnesota who assisted in the study think there are two reasons why babies of overweight or obese women lag initially in their physical development. The first deals with inflammation: fat cells that normally help suppress a person's immune system flare up when an adult is overweight, studies have shown. The researchers believes this state of warfare being waged in an overweight/obese pregnant mother's immune system may also inflame the fetus's developing immune system, diverting energy that otherwise would go to the baby's development.
"These (fat tissue-derived) hormones and inflammatory factors tend to have appetite/satiety regulating effects early on, and may exert their negative effects on growth both during gestation and through passage into the breast milk during postnatal development as well," says Ellen Demerath, Larson Ode's advisor at Minnesota and senior author on the paper.
The second cause has to do with how babies grow in the womb. One is through free fatty acids delivered by the mother via a growth hormone called IGF-1. The other is through a growth hormone secreted by the pituitary gland in the baby's brain. The researchers think the cosseted baby is getting so many free fatty acid-derived growth hormones from its overweight mother that the other growth generatorthe pituitary glandslows its production.
So, when the baby is born and is cut off from the mother's growth line, the pituitary gland is not developed enough to pick up the slack, the researchers think. "It's just not mature yet," says Larson Ode, whose clinical appointment is in the Carver College of Medicine.
The study included 97 mothers, of which 38 were overweight or obese. None was diabetic. The researchers found babies of overweight/obese mothers gained 11 ounces less than those born to normal-wei
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| Contact: Richard Lewis richard-c-lewis@uiowa.edu 319-384-0012 University of Iowa Source:Eurekalert |