Maternal body fat, not blood sugar levels, affects newborn weight

Among 472 pregnant women, those who were heavy before pregnancy or gained too many pregnancy pounds were more likely to have a large-for-gestational-age baby.

Experts have long known that women who have gestational diabetes are at increased risk of having a big baby. And the baby's weight is largely blamed on those mothers' high blood sugar levels. The new findings suggest that for women without gestational diabetes, excess pounds really matter in the baby's birth weight, said lead researcher Dr Ravi Retnakaran of Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. "If we want to reduce the risk of having a big baby," he told Reuters Health, "the real gain would be in targeting the mother's weight."

In the US, the American Diabetes Association has endorsed the proposal, but the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists is holding off on a decision: while it is awaiting results from a conference to be held on the issue in October by the National Institutes of Health. If the new criteria were adopted, Dr Retnakaran said, about one-fifth of pregnant women in Canada would be "labelled" as having gestational diabetes - more than double the current rate, Health24 reports.

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