Abstract:
Introduction: Incidence of childhood obesity is increasing
worldwide and obesity related comorbidities are also increasing
simultaneously in the paediatric population. During pregnancy,
growth of the foetus is highly influenced by the in utero
environment. It is established that Asians have lower skeletal
muscle mass and excess body fat for a given Body Mass Index
(BMI).
Aim: To determine the associations between aetiologies and the
birth of Large for Gestational Age (LGA) babies for the first time
in a tertiary care setting in Southern Sri Lanka and to determine
whether changes in maternal lipid profile are associated with
the birth of LGA babies.
Materials and Methods: In the first arm of the study, 149
mothers were interviewed to obtain information on aetiologies
and complications associated with birth of LGA babies. In the
second arm of the study, 3 mL of blood was collected from 104
mothers and serum total cholesterol, triglycerides and HDL cholesterol concentration were measured and LDL cholesterol
concentration was calculated by the Friedewald equation.
Anthropometric parameters of the newborns were measured.
Results: There were significantly higher levels (p<0.001) of
serum triglycerides and significantly lower levels (p<0.001) of
serum HDL in mothers who delivered LGA babies compared to
mothers who delivered appropriate for gestational age babies.
There were significant correlations between maternal serum
triglyceride and HDL level and the birth weight (r=0.529, 0.397),
length (r=0.485, 0.358) and head circumference (r=0.228, 0.252)
of the newborn respectively.
Conclusion: Our findings suggest that high maternal TG and Low
HDL levels in late pregnancy are independently and significantly
associated with the birth of LGA infants. The results of present
study were not significantly different from previously published
results on other populations hence this preliminary study
suggest that having high body fat in the Sri Lankan population
had no significant impact on the birth of LGA infants.
