The researchers from the University of Michigan in the United States, U.S, stated that carrying extra pounds around the waist is linked to a range of conditions that can harm an infant’s brain.
In turn, these heightened the likelihood of giving birth to a sufferer of the incurable disorder, the new study suggested. Cerebral palsy is a group of permanent movement disorders that appear in early childhood.
Signs and symptoms vary among people. Often, symptoms include poor coordination, stiff muscles, weak muscles, and tremors. There may also be problems with sensation, vision, hearing, swallowing, and speaking. Often babies with CP do not roll over, sit, crawl, or walk as early as other children of their age. Difficulty with the ability to think or reason and seizures each occurs in about one third of people with CP.
The ‘mailonline’ reported that despite advances in neonatal care, the rate of CP has increased in recent years for children born at full term. Before now, majority of children with CP arose from kids that experienced obstetric complications during delivery.
However, the report shows that few preventable factors are known to affect the risk of CP. Researcher looked at children born in Sweden from between 1997 and 2011.
Of the slightly more than 1.4 million who entered the world, 3,029 were diagnosed with CP. A further analysis of the data indicated a clear link between obese and rates of the disorder, which is estimated to affect one in every 400 births in the United States, U.S, and the United Kingdom, UK.
Being obese or overweight is having more body fat than is optimally healthy. Overweight is common especially where food supplies are plentiful and lifestyles are sedentary.
Excess weight has reached epidemic proportions globally, with more than 1 billion adults being either overweight or obese as at 2003. In his reaction, the study author, Professor Eduardo Villamor, said the results were ‘statistically significant’ for those born at a healthy weight. The same link couldn’t be determined in premature babies.
Nearly half of the causes of CP could be put down to asphyxia-related neonatal complications. The researchers noted that the effect of maternal obesity on CP may seem small compared with other risk factors.
