Researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland have revealed that children born through cesarean section have more risk of becoming obese or overweight in their childhood compared to children born through normal delivery.

Cesarean babies have 40% more risk of becoming obese than vaginal birth children according to their research. This proportion increases further if the mother is overweight or obese. This suggests that overweight mothers should try for vaginal delivery to reduce the inter-generational association of obesity.

The new research was done by taking into account mother’s age at the delivery time, race, education, pre-pregnancy BMI, weight gain during pregnancy, exposure to air pollution and child’s birth weight.

The study found that children who became obese were born to overweight mother regardless of their birth weight. This result is more seen in women who delivered through cesarean section than normal.

Noel Mueller, assistant professor at John Hopkins University said: “We think that the reason for the difference may be due to the beneficial microbes found in the birth canal that newborns are exposed to during a vaginal birth.

“We think that the reason for the difference may be due to the beneficial microbes found in the birth canal that newborns are exposed to during a vaginal birth”.

The research was analysed based on data from 1441 full-term deliveries from the Boston Birth Cohort. Among these pregnant women, 57% of the women who delivered via cesarean section were obese and only 53% of the babies who were delivered vaginally were overweight.

The age of children ranged from two eight years at the time of outcome measurement.

  Caesarean section, obesity, Pregnancy