Maternal Obesity Induce Offspring with Risk of Cardiovascular Disease

Obesity is a condition where excess body fat negatively affects health or wellbeing. As methods that determine body fat directly are difficult, the diagnosis of obesity is often based on BMI. Due to the rising prevalence of obesity and its many adverse health effects, it is being recognized as a serious public health concern (Lobstein and Leach, 2007).

Obesity is usually defined by using the body mass index (BMI). A persons BMI is worked out by dividing the persons weight in kilograms by their height in meters squared. To be classified as obese a person’s BMI will be equal to or over 30. (CDC, 2015)

Obesity during childhood is associated with increased risk of obesity, premature death and disability in later life and drives to the growth of type 2 diabetes (WHO, 2015; Singh et al, 2008). Life course approach is easily understandable in the context of obesity, since obesity is connected with many macro and micro level factors which come and play during a person’s lifespan i.e. in each critical period. (Prenatal to old age). Each of those factors depend by the life stage and major transition points of the life trajectory (Musingarimi, 2008). Micro level factors are poor nutrients to mother during pregnancy, low income of the family, no or lack of breastmilk from mother during infancy and childhood, energy dense food consumption, sedentary lifestyle, gender, ethnicity, socio economic status whereas macro level factors are food insecurity, low income, company policies (minimum wage), inability to access health services, lack of government support, lack of policies to promote nutritious foods. Each of these factors are interconnected and drives to the development of an obese person by certain

Obesity is defined as defined as abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that may impair health. Obesity is not only based on an individual’s weight but also their BMI. A BMI greater than or equal to 25 is overweight. A BMI greater than or equal to 30 is obesity ((Organization, 2013). Obesity is the most common preventable deaths and the fifths leading health risk globally. Obesity has also been linked to other debilitating diseases and can increase a person’s chances of being hospitalized. Obesity-related conditions include heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer, some of the leading causes of preventable death (cdc.gov, 2014).

In our time period, there is a significant increase in the average body index in all age groups and most commonly with the women who are entering their reproduction age. According to the article, “Weight Gain During Pregnancy”, a normal weighted gravida, or pregnant woman, has BMI of 18.5–24.9 Kg/m2, over-weight gravida has BMI of 25–29.9 Kg/m2, and obese gravida has BMI of 30 and greater Kg/m2. Obese pregnant women face many critical health risks compare to normal weight pregnant women. In the study “Maternal Obesity a Global Health Problem and Its Implications on Maternal and Fetal Health”, by Hashmi and his colleagues, they aimed to find out if obese women were at greater risk of having adverse reproductive outcomes compared to women with a normal BMI. By using

Although the mechanism of obesity development is not fully understood, it is confirmed that obesity occurs when energy intake exceeds energy expenditure. There are multiple etiologies for this imbalance, hence, and the rising prevalence of obesity cannot be addressed by a single etiology (Dehghan et al., 2005, p.

When thinking of public health in regards specifically to obesity, a study into maternal obesity and the long-term health of the offspring, found that ‘maternal obesity has been associated with a number of long-term adverse health outcomes in the offspring, including lifelong risk of obesity and metabolic dysregulation with increased insulin resistance, hypertension and dyslipidaemia, as well as behavioural problems and risk of asthma’ (O’Reilly et al, 2012:1), this highlights to us the implications not just to mother, but the long term effects to her child.

Obesity is a condition where the fat in the body is collected and stored in huge amounts. It is the Body Mass Index (BMI) which is the comparison between the weight and the height of a person that would help in identifying obese cases. If BMI's is greater than 25, the person would be called overweight and if it is more than 30 than he would be called obese. Obesity is an issue of public concern because of the threat it has towards the physical and the mental health, to the relationship, development and the overall well being of an individual. It is not only limited to a particular age group, gender, culture or a part of the globe. Instead, every individual is in danger to its bad affects.

Obesity is an increase in the body weight beyond the limitation of skeletal and physical requirement, as the result of an excessive accumulation of fat in the body. It has become a long-term health problem that affects the entire population. Obesity has increased to epidemic portions over the past several years. The reason for this epidemic in general is

Obesity is defined as the excessive build-up of body fat that has major detrimental effects on an individual’s health (Caballero, 2007). The major cause of this excess accumulation of body fat is due to a positive energy balance i.e. when the input of energy into the body system exceeds the output of energy which in turn facilitates in weight gain (Caballero, 2007). Obesity is a major health issue in modern day society, firstly because it affects approximately 300 million people worldwide (Weight Management Centre and secondly, drastic alteration in the body’s fat intake also leads to the increasing prevalence of other major health conditions such as cardiovascular disease, stroke, non-insulin dependent diabetes and hypertension (WMC, 2010).

Of the 102 participants fifty (49%) were classified as non-obese and fifty-two (51%) as obese at the conception of the pregnancies. The mean PPBMI for the non-obese group was 25.5 ± 2.3 kg/m2 compared to 37.9 ± 5.9 kg/m2 in the obese group (Stone et al., 2011). The obese group of women gained less weight during the pregnancy than the non-obese group. Preterm delivery occurrences at less than 37 weeks were similar between both groups at 32.0% for the non-obese and 28.8% in the obese group. Little difference was noted between the groups in the gestational ages at delivery and infant birth weights. Additionally, no clinically significant differences in the development of GDM, NICU or nursery admissions were noted. However the maternal obesity group had clinically significant differences in the cesarean delivery rate (63.5% vs. 36.0%, p = 0.010) and the development of PRH (36.5% vs. 8%, p = 0.010) in comparison to the non-obese group, these were statistically significant findings (Stone et al., 2011).

A condition of modern times, obesity is said to be the greatest epidemic currently facing humanity (WHO, 2003; Hill, 2007). Obesity is one of the most frequent causes of preventable death in developed nations (Bauer et al., 2014), with the United States being home to over 150 million overweight or obese individuals – 65% of the adult population (Flegel, 2002; US Census Bureau, 2010). Obesity is often caused by a mismatch between energy intake and usage, thus it is frequently seen in those who live a sedentary lifestyle (Hu, 2003), such as the patient in this scenario. Obesity is now a major public health concern and has recently been voted by the American Medical Association to be classified as a ‘disease’ (Dailey, 2013). Indeed, the cost of obesity to the United Kingdom’s economy was estimated to be £15.8 billion, with £4.2 billion in direct costs to the National Health Service (Public Health England, 2007).

Obesity has become an epidemic health problem. It is not only about genetics but also the environmental factors involved in obesity. According to Kaushik Prashant and James T. Anderson Epigenetic it is the study of heritable but the dynamic changes to genomic function that regulate gene expression independently of DNA sequence. The study have shown that the maternal nutrition is controlled during pregnancy that can alter the metabolic phenotype of the offspring by means of epigenetic regulation of specific genes, and this can be passed to the next generation. Obesity is associated with extensive gene expression changes throughout the body. It is a simple disease with multiple risk factors.

Overweight parents have been recognized as a dominating negative variable for adolescent obesity, presumably caused from a blend of hereditary, biological, social and ecological factors. Children with two obese parents have a higher danger of obesity than those with one or no overweight parent. In another study, 921 obese children enlisted at the National Childhood Obesity Center at University Hospital, Huddinge, Sweden, between 1997–2006, and were investigated for possible causes of excess weight (Svensson et al., 2011). The study bolsters the conclusion that hereditary components play a larger role in relation to weight, particularly during pre-adulthood. Past perceptions have proposed that there are three discriminating

Given the translational work investigating obesity and its impact on reproductive function, it is clear that obesity has the capacity to affect one’s reproductive physiology at several levels. Reproductive targets of obesity include the hypothalamus, the ovary and ovarian follicle, the oocyte, the embryo, and the uterine endometrium. The following table lists these targets along with some of the supporting studies that have shed light on the mechanisms by which obesity affects these targets. This table also lists the sources of specimens used in the supporting