Exploring The Developmental Overnutrition Hypothesis

Main Category: Pregnancy / Obstetrics
Also Included In: Nutrition / Diet;  Obesity / Weight Loss / Fitness;  Women's Health / Gynecology
Article Date: 11 Mar 2008 - 4:00 PDT

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A study published this week in PLoS Medicine explores the developmental overnutrition hypothesis in British mothers. This is the hypothesis that if a mother is overweight during pregnancy, high sugar and fat levels in her body might permanently affect her growing baby's appetite control and metabolism, and so her offspring might be at risk of becoming obese in later life.

Debbie Lawlor (of the University of Bristol) and colleagues used two approaches to test the developmental overnutrition hypothesis in a cohort of British mothers. Firstly they asked whether offspring fat mass is more strongly related to maternal body mass index (BMI) than to paternal BMI - if the hypothesis is true this should be the case. Secondly, they asked whether a genetic indicator of maternal fatness-the ''A'' variant of the FTO gene-is related to offspring fat mass.

The findings from the first approach provide some support for the developmental overnutrition hypothesis, but the greater effect of maternal BMI on offspring fat mass is too weak to explain the recent obesity epidemic. The findings from the second approach provide no support for the developmental overnutrition hypothesis, although these results have wide error margins and need confirming in a larger study. Taking both findings together the authors conclude that greater maternal BMI in pregnancy is unlikely to have been a major drive of the recent obesity epidemic.

The research is discussed in a related perspective.

Exploring the developmental overnutrition hypothesis using parental-offspring associations and FTO as an instrumental variable
Lawlor DA, Timpson NJ, Harbord RM, Leary S, Ness A, et al.
PLoS Med 5(3): e33.
Please click here to view article online

-- Related PLoS Medicine perspective:

Determining origins and causes of childhood obesity via Mendelian randomization analysis
Ding EL, Hu FB
PLoS Med 5(3): e65.
Please click here to view article online

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