Parental Obesity Imposes Great Risk For Developmental Delays On Children

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Scientists at the NIH's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) conducted a study about the relevance of obese parents to the developmental delays of their children.

Edwina Yeung, PhD., the first author of the study and an investigator in NICHD's Division of Intramural Population Health Research, told Science Daily, "The previous U.S. studies in this area have focused on mothers' pre-and post-pregnancy weight." Dr. Yeung also added that their study also includes information about the fathers, and results suggests that the father's weight also has a significant influence on child development.

One in five women in the United States is obese or overweight according to Dr. Yeung and her colleagues.

The team reviewed the data gathered from the Upstate Kids study that originally to determine if fertility treatment affects the child development from birth through age 3. Parents are made to complete the ages and stages questionnaire after performing the series of activities with their children. The test involves 5,000 women roughly 4 months after giving birth in New York State between 2008 and 2010.

Dr. Yeung and her coauthors tested the children at four months of age and retested 6 more times through age 3. They also made mothers provide information on their health and weight before and after pregnancy as well as their partners.

Per Fox2 Now, Dr. Yeung also explained that "the fine motor skills part, for example, asks such questions as whether the child can turn the pages of the book or whether he or she can stack blocks."

Results of the tests are compared to the children with normal weight mothers, shows that children with obese mothers were nearly 70 percent more likely to have failed the test indicator on fine motor skill by age 3. Likewise, children with obese fathers were 75 percent more likely to fail the test on personal domain which indicates how well they can relate and interact with other children by the age of 3. With both obese parents also shows three times more likely to fail the problem solving by age 3.

"Our study was not designed to prove the cause and effect. At this point, we only have correlations between parents' BMI and children's scores on a screening questionnaire", Dr. Yeung clarified.

But studies on animals show that obesity during pregnancy may promote inflammation, which can affect fetal brain.

 In line with this, Dr. Yeung added that "Obesity is correlated with a rise of an inflammation and hormones that regulate the body fat and metabolism. One theory is that these hormones might influence the development of the baby's brain."

The study offers less further information on the potential effects of paternal obesity on child development, but the authors hypothesized that obesity could affect the expression of genes in the sperm as cited in their previous research.