Browsing by Author "Laurinen, Anni"

Maternal obesity and childhood obesity are major problems for the public economy. Maternal obesity or the mother’s gestational diabetes mellitus may put the child at risk for accelerating growth in the first few months of life. Accelerating growth in early infancy is a risk factor for obesity in later childhood and adulthood. This study examined the effect of the mother’s genetic risk for obesity, defined by testing for SNP genetic variations associated with obesity, on the connection between the mother’s pre-pregnancy obesity and the early growth profiles of the offspring. This study is a secondary analysis of the RADIEL study. RADIEL is a gestational diabetes study, the material for which was assembled in the areas of the Hospital District of Helsinki and Uusimaa and the South Karelia Central Hospital in the years of 2008 to 2013. The women selected for the study were women who were either planning a pregnancy or who were pregnant with their gestational weeks being 20 or less. They were all at risk for gestational diabetes, either by having a BMI of at least 30 kg/m2 or by having had gestational diabetes in a prior pregnancy. The follow-up visits for the mothers took place in every trimester of pregnancy and after birth at 6 weeks, 6 months, and 12 months. There was also a follow-up study for the mothers and children 5 years after the birth. In addition, records of birth were collected from the maternity hospitals and records of the children’s growth were collected from child care centers. The mother’s genetic predisposition for obesity was modelled by testing for 49 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and by creating a polygenic risk score for obesity (BMI-PRS) from them, which was used for grouping the mothers in groups of low, medium, and high genetic risk. Based on growth records from child care centers, the children’s growth was modelled in growth profiles, which were grouped into the ascending, descending, and intermediate growth profile groups based on the growth trends in the first few months of life. In the study, a positive connection between the BMI-PRS and maternal pre-pregnancy obesity was found. The BMI-PRS also had a statistically significant positive association with the connection between maternal pre-pregnancy obesity and the offspring’s early growth profiles. The connection between maternal pre-pregnancy obesity and the offspring’s ascending early growth profile was only found in the high risk BMI-PRS group. No association was found between the BMI-PRS and gestational diabetes or the BMI-PRS and the connection between gestational diabetes and early growth profiles. According to the results, the mother’s genetic risk for obesity affects the connection between maternal pre-pregnancy obesity and the offspring’s early growth, but further research is needed on this topic.