Adiposity in Offsprings of Gestational Diabetic Mothers : Association of gestational diabetes and percent fat mass of under 5 years offspring

Many prospective studies found elevated blood sugar during perinatal period as a causal factor for the development of adiposity in offspring. Most of the studies were done on adolescents and choose BMI as a surrogate measure for adiposity. With the increasing prevalence of gestational diabetes (7% annually) childhood adiposity is also increasing both in developed and developing countries. In this book, the percent fat mass of offsprings (age ranged from 13 to 49 months) of gestational diabetic mothers and offsprings of mothers without gestational diabetes were compared. Both these two groups of mothers were selected from a cohort registered in the Biomedical Research Group of BIRDEM, Dhaka, Bangladesh, about 1-5 years back. Analysis was done to find out the effect of socioeconomic factors, treatment for gestational diabetes, family history of obesity and early life feeding practices on adiposity of the offsprings. The analysis should help those who are working to prevent childhood adiposity in relation to gestational diabetes.