Kids of obese or smoking moms more likely to become obese

By Stephen Beech

Children of moms who smoked or were obese are more likely to become obese adults themselves, according to a new study.

Researchers found that factors beyond a person’s control - such as socio-economic status and whether their mothers were smokers or overweight - can influence whether they pile on the pounds as teenagers or adults.

And they continue to be an influence until the age of 42, according to findings published in the journal PLOS One.

The Scottish research team estimated the impact of several factors on a person’s weight, including societal factors - such as a person’s job type, as well as early life factors, including how they were delivered and whether their mother smoked or was obese.

The team looked specifically at whether a person was overweight, obese or severely obese at age 16 and age 42.

They also looked at participants’ weight between the ages of 16 and 42, a range that spans the rise in obesity rates in the UK.

The data came from the 1958 National Child Development Study, a long-term project that followed the lives of more than 17,000 people born in a single week in March 1958 across England, Scotland and Wales.

Study author Dr. Glenna Nightingale, of the University of Edinburgh, said: "The analysis showed that if a mother was obese or if she smoked, her child was more likely to be obese or severely obese at each of the ages examined.

"The findings demonstrate that these early life factors can have a persistent effect on a person’s weight.

"Notably, these factors were just as powerful before and after the start of the rise in obesity rates in the UK, suggesting that the impact of individual factors, like behaviors, likely did not change during that time.

"The results suggest that societal and early-life risk factors could be used to target obesity prevention programs for children and adults."

The research team also concluded that, since individual risk factors have not changed as obesity rates have risen, new studies are needed to identify factors that may have caused the current obesity pandemic.

Dr. Nightingale added: "Our research shows that the effect of maternal influences persists through to age 42 and that strikingly, those predictors were just as powerful - and prevalent - in the era before the current obesity pandemic began.

"This suggests that novel studies are needed of factors at the community/societal level that may have caused the current obesity pandemic, since individual-level risk factors appear not to have changed over the time period spanning the pandemic’s onset and growth.”