Women who develop diabetes during pregnancy are liable to have large babies, which in turn can lead to obesity in childhood - but that chain of events may be interrupted if the mother breastfeeds, researchers report.
Diabetes that develops during pregnancy is termed gestational diabetes mellitus or GDM.
"In a recent study of infants of mothers who had GDM, we demonstrated that parental obesity and excessive intrauterine growth resulting in neonatal overweight independently contribute to early childhood obesity," Dr Ute M Schaefer-Graf and colleagues explain in the medical journal Diabetes Care.
For their current study, the researchers from Vivantes Medical Centre and Charite University Medical Centre in Berlin, Germany, examined the association between breastfeeding and being overweight in early childhood in the same group of 324 children.
Women with GDM who participated in the Diabetes Prenatal Care Clinic of Vivantes Medical Centre between 1995 and 2000 were asked to return with their children when they were between 2 and 8 years of age. The mothers were also asked about patterns of breastfeeding.
Two hundred forty-one mothers (74%) reported that they breastfed their infants. Seventy-seven infants (24%) were breastfed for up to 3 months, and 164 (50%) were breastfed for more than 3 months.
Ninety-two children (28%) were overweight. The shorter the duration of breastfeeding, the higher the children's body mass index or BMI, the investigators found.
Of the children who were not breastfed, 37% were overweight; that compared with 32% of children breastfed for up to 3 months, and 22% for those breastfed longer than 3 months.
After adjusting for confounding factors, Schaefer-Graf and colleagues found that in infants who were breastfed for more than 3 months, the risk of becoming overweight in early childhood was reduced by up to 50%.
The investigators also found that women with GDM who were obese were less likely to breastfeed their infants.
These findings suggest that obese women with GDM should be
encouraged to breastfeed for 3 months or longer if possible to
reduce the risk of their kids becoming obese.
