ESPE Abstracts

Background: It has been suggested that maternal prepregnancy overweight has an effect on childhood overweight.

Objective: We aimed to use a survival analysis approach to investigate the association between maternal prepregnancy overweight and childhood overweight in the prospective Ulm Birth Cohort Study (UBCS).

Design: At baseline n=1086 mothers and their newborns agreed to participate in the UBCS. Weight and height values of the children were obtained at birth, 6 months, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 years of age. Overweight in childhood was calculated using the ≥90^th age- and sex-specific percentiles of the German reference data. Missing BMI values were multiple imputed (n=5). Maternal prepregnancy weight status was obtained from maternal record of prenatal care (normal weight: BMI <24.9 kg/m² and overweight: BMI ≥25 kg/m²). In the survival analysis we analyzed the data of n=1026 children and their mothers with complete baseline variables (age at delivery, migration background, school education, week of gestation, maternal smoking during pregnancy, number of parity and intention to breastfed the child).

Methods: We performed a survival analysis using the Kaplan–Meier method. We calculated the hazard ratio (HR) of the effect of maternal prepregnancy overweight on childhood overweight using the Cox proportional hazard model after adjustment for covariates.

Results: 20.9% of the children became overweight between birth and 6 years of age. The time-to-event curve for offsprings of prepregnancy normal weight mothers was slightly higher compared to the curve for offsprings of prepregnancy overweight mothers. Compared to offsprings of prepregnancy normal weight mothers, offsprings of prepregnancy overweight mothers had a significantly elevated risk for overweight in childhood (HR: 1.60; 95% CI: 1.31–1.89), even after adjusting for baseline covariates (HR: 1.51; 95% CI: 1.21–1.82).

Conclusion: These results suggest that maternal prepregnancy overweight may be a significant factor in the association between fetal environment and post-delivery development of overweight.

Funding: The UBCS was supported by grants of the German Research Council (BR 1704/3-1, BR 1704/3) and of the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF, project funding reference number: 01GI0851).