Maternal smoking during pregnancy and it's association with childhood overweight and obesity : systematic review and meta analysis
Year: 2014
Type: review
Study designs: Systematic Review, Meta-Analysis
Abstract: According to World Health Organization, abnormal or excessive deposition of fat, which becomes a risk factor for various health hazards later, is defined as obesity.BMI of 25 or more is termed as overweight and if the BMI is 30 or more, it is considered as obesity.Each year around 2.8 million adults die due to overweight or obesity.Overweight and obesity can contribute to development of various chronic diseases in later life.It is estimated that overweight or obesity are responsible for 44% of diabetes cases, 23% of ischemic heart disease and between 7 and 41% of cancer cases.Not only in the developed world, obesity now has become a major problem in the developing and least developed countries as well.The objective of this study was to perform a systematic review and a meta-analysis to see the association of maternal smoking during pregnancy with the childhood overweight or obesity.Studies from PubMed and Ebsco Host Academic Search Premier databases published through March 2012 to September 2013 were searched.Included studies showed an association between prenatal maternal smoking and child overweight or obesity measured by adjusted odd's ratio with 95% confidence interval.The selected age of outcome (child age) was less than 19 years.We didn't include the systematic review and animal studies showing positive association.Based on the selected 7 epidemiological studies, children of mother who smoked during pregnancy were at the greater risk of getting overweight (pooled adjusted odds ratio (OR) 1.51, 95% CI: 1.17, 1.97).The pooled aOR for younger children of less than 9 years was of 2.63 with 95% CI between 1.10 and 6.30 and for the older children, pooled adjusted odds ratio was 1.28 with 95% CI between 1.07 and 1.54.The risk of obesity was also greater among the children whose mother smoked during pregnancy (pooled adjusted OR1.37, 95% CI: 1.19, 1.57).Maternal smoking during pregnancy is an independent risk factor for the childhood overweight and obesity.Maternal smoking being a modifiable risk factor can help to prevent the incidence of childhood overweight or obesity if preventive measures are considered.
Author: Anjali Shrestha
Language: English
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3097402082