Health
Obese women have more babies with heart defects
Posted: Oct 2, 2009 7:26 AM by NBC
Women who are overweight or obese before they get pregnant appear to be at an increased risk of having babies with heart defects.
A new study from the CDC finds that babies born to severely obese women had a 30% increased risk of having a congenital heart problem, compared to babies with moms of normal weight. Those problems include obstructive defects on the right side of the heart, and defects in the tissue that separates the two upper chambers of the heart.
The analysis included 6,440 infants with congenital heart defects and 5,673 infants without birth defects whose mothers were interviewed as part of the National Birth Defects Prevention Study. The study was led by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
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