Excessive weight gain before or during pregnancy is a known risk factor for gestational diabetes and thearterial hypertension. But a new study suggests that gaining pounds between two pregnancies also has an impact on the health of the mother-to-be and her child. According to this study led by Pr. Sven Cnattingius of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm (Sweden) and published in The Lancet, women who gain weight (even a little) between their first and second pregnancies increase the risk of having a stillborn baby or who dies in its first year.
A risk that can increase by 50%
To conduct their latest study, the researchers used data from the Swedish Medical Birth Registry, which assessed more than 450,000 women who gave birth to two children between 1992 and 2012. The team of researchers analyzed the risk of stillbirth. (which is defined as fetal death at 28 weeks gestation or later) and infant mortality (death in the baby’s first year of life) and compared it to a change in body mass index ( BMI) of the mother between the two pregnancies.
The results show that babies of mothers who gained more than 4 body mass index points (or about 12kg in an average-sized woman) between the two pregnancies had a 50% higher risk of dying in their first four. weeks of life, compared to babies whose mothers had maintained a stable weight.
The researchers, however, weight these results by stressing that the risk of premature death of the baby remains low in absolute terms. In Sweden, for example, the number of stillbirths is of the order of 2 per 1000 births, a figure which rises to 3 when the risk is increased by 50%.
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