Gestational Diabetes may affect newborn body fat

Published on: 31/05/2016

A new study has found that babies who are born to mothers with gestational diabetes have more body fat at two months of age, than those born to other mothers.

 

The study, conducted by the Imperial College London, performed MRIs on 86 babies in order to measure body fat. They compared results from shortly after birth and when babies were between eight and twelve weeks old. The results showed that whilst there were no differences in body fat shortly after birth, by two months old, a 16% increase in body fat was seen in those who had be born to mothers with gestational diabetes.

 

42 babies had mothers diagnosed with gestational diabetes, and 44 babies had mothers without the condition, acting as a healthy comparison group. Most of the babies in the study were breastfed.

 

Dr Karen Logan, from the research team, stated that this was the first study to show such early changes in babies, despite no differences at birth: “Gestational diabetes is becoming more and more common, and babies born to these mothers are at increased risk of developing diabetes when they grow up. Therefore we need to understand what affects maternal diabetes has on the baby”

 

Professor Neena Modi, also from the research team and President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, comments: “The importance of this unexpected finding is that the beginnings of obesity are apparent in early infancy in babies born to mothers with diabetes, indicating that research targeted at methods to reduce excessive fat deposition in these babies is urgently needed”.

 

The reasons for the differences are currently unknown, but a range of explanations are being considered. The research team will now assess the composition of breastmilk from mothers with gestational diabetes to determine if any differences are related.

 

For more on this story see RCM article here