Study links women’s obesity, birth defects

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By LINDSEY TANNER
Tuesday, August 7, 2007 – Page updated at 02:06 AM
The Associated Press
CHICAGO — Women who are obese before pregnancy face a higher risk of having babies with a variety of birth defects than women with a healthy weight, a new study suggests.

I shouldn’t, but I’m going to assume that when they talk about obese women they aren’t speaking of women that are just 20 pounds overweight. It makes sense that if a woman is so overweight that she has health problems due to weight her unborn baby may be affected. If any woman takes in too much caffeine, alcohol, or certain over the counter medications it can have serious effects on her unborn child, so it makes sense to me that a woman that has a wholly unhealthy lifestyle (in this case diet and exercise) could also cause negative effects to her baby especially if the bulk of her diet is overly processed foods with long ingredient lists (my bias, sorry). But does obesity automatically mean that the person has a bad diet and/or is unhealthy? To me that’s like assuming skinny people are healthy and/or vegetarians.

The results involving nearly 15,000 women from eight states found abnormalities of the spine, heart, arms, legs and abdomen, building on previous research that showed heart and spine defects. The greatest risk was for spina bifida.

Were these obese women or just 15,000 random women? If they were all obese how did the rates compare to women of a healthy weight and women that are overweight?

“Obese women should not be overly alarmed by these findings because their absolute risk of having a child with a birth defect is low, and the cause of the majority of birth defects is unknown,” said University of Texas researcher Kim Waller, the study’s lead author.

So why are we sharing this “news”? You’re only telling us that their absolute risk is low. Is absolute risk higher than for healthy weight women and over weight women? – if not why are we wasting this valuable newspaper space?

Still, the results underline yet another reason for women to maintain a healthy weight, Waller said.

Great, any F@#$ suggestions for those that have thyroid problems or for those that already have a healthy diet and adequate exercise?

The findings, published Monday in the August edition of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, suggest that about 4 percent of women who are obese before pregnancy will have babies with major birth defects, versus 3 percent for healthy-weight women, Waller said.

A one percent difference? Are you F#@$ing Sh@tting me? That’s not a found link in birth defects! That’s like getting pulled over for doing one mile an hour over the speed limit and calling it reckless driving.

Obese women faced double the risk of having babies with spina bifida than women of healthy weight. With spina bifida, the most common disabling birth defect in the United States, the spinal column fails to close properly.

Babies born to very heavy women also were 60 percent more likely to have a rare defect in which abdominal organs protrude through the belly button; 40 percent more likely to have heart defects; 36 percent more likely to have shortened arms or legs; and at least 20 percent more likely to have any of several gastrointestinal deformities.

Ok this sounds extremely significant, but we’re always hearing that the rate of obesity climbing in the US…if obesity is the link than is the rate of these birth defects also climbing?

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5 thoughts on “Study links women’s obesity, birth defects”

  3. Yeah it really didn’t make sense that percentages of specific defects could be so high with only a one percent overall difference. My thought was that maybe those defects are sooo rare that one child with a birth defect born to an obese woman equals a 60% increase. Thank you for that link. That version seems a lot more informative than the article I posted especially this part,

    Waller said the study did not look at how obesity was related to the defects. It may be that obesity does not cause the defects but is a marker for other factors that do.

    She said one possibility was that the obese mothers had undiagnosed Type 2 diabetes.

    “Diabetes is a strong and well-known risk factor for birth defects, and obese women are more likely to get diabetes,” she said.

    Other explanations include differences in the types of food obese women eat or the potential effect of weight-loss techniques, such as fasting or diet modifications.

    All women should eat a healthy diet with fortified foods and take a folic acid supplement before and during pregnancy, Waller said.

  4. Don’t you just love these studies? And the screaming headlines that accompany them?? I recently dissected a study having to do with taking anti-depressants while pregnant or breastfeeding. I posted about it a couple of times on my blog and learned how much confusion there is about the issue (not to mention the emotions involved among women faced with that choice). Anyway, sometimes I can’t even read some of these studies seriously, especially when they’re funded by pharmaceutical companies.
    I love your blog, by the way, and will go link to it from mine.
    Best,
    Kristin
    http://ppdsurvivor.blogspot.com

  5. Yeah they’re just great. The article that “Sueblimely Discovering – Blogging” actually gives quit a bit more info than the one I had found though. In the article that she found in the LA Times it says,

    The researchers related the birth defects found in the study with the body mass index of mothers. The index reflects the ratio of height to weight; a person with a BMI of 30 or higher is considered obese. A 5-foot-6 woman weighing 186 pounds would have a BMI of 30.

    Any woman that has a large bone structure/stocky build or female athlete (especially body builders) know that the BMI is a shitty way to determine who is or isn’t obese.

    Anyway thank you Kristin for reading my post. I’ll have to check out your anti-depressant study dissection. I’m really interested in knowing more about that!