Expectant women who are either obese or underweight are putting themselves at risk for complications and hospitalisation, according to a new Scottish study.
The findings – published in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology – highlight the need for strategies to reduce obesity. “Longer-term benefits of reducing maternal obesity will show improvements, not only in the health outcomes of mother and their babies,” the study’s co-author, Dr. Fiona Denison says, “but the workload and cost to current maternity services.”
The study, which examined data from nearly 1,000 pregnant women in Scotland, revealed that the risk of pregnancy complications among women increased with BMI. Severely obese women were three times more likely than normal-weight women to have high blood pressure and gestational diabetes. The risk of hospitalization was 8% higher for underweight women, 16% higher for overweight women and 45% higher for obese women, according to the study.
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This article originally published at BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.
Image credit: Flickr user Kit4na.
