Pre-pregnancy maternal BMI as predictor of neonatal birth weight
Rafia Gul, Samar Iqbal, Zahid Anwar, Saher Gul Ahdi, Syed Hamza Ali, Saima Pirzada
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: BMI is a tool to measure maternal nutritional status. Maternal malnutrition is frequently reported health problem especially during child bearing age and effects neonatal birth weight. AIM: To determine relationship between prepregnancy maternal BMI and neonatal birth weight. METHODS AND MATERIAL: Prospective, cross sectional study conducted in Fatima Memorial Hospital, Lahore, Pakistan over a period of 1 year including 2766 mother-neonate pairs. All full term, live born neonates of both gender in early neonatal period (<72 hours) with documented maternal pre-pregnancy and/or first trimester BMI were enrolled. Data analysis using SPSS version 20, was performed. RESULTS: Data analysis of 2766 mother-neonates pairs showed that there were 32.9% overweight and 16.5% obese mothers. More than two third of all overweight and obese mothers were of age group between 26-35 years. Diabetes mellitus, hypertension, medical illness, uterine malformations and caesarean mode of delivery were more prevalent in obese mothers as 22.8%, 10.1%, 13.2%, 2.6% and 75.4% respectively. Mean birth weight, length and OFC increased with increasing maternal BMI. Comparing for normal weight mothers, underweight mothers were at increased risk of low birth weight (p< 0.01) and low risk of macrosomic neonates (p<0.01). However overweight and obese mothers were comparable to normal weight mothers for delivering macrosomic neonates (p 0.89 and p 0.66 respectively). CONCLUSIONS: Our study highlights that direct relationship exists between maternal BMI and neonatal birth weight.