Health status and habits of pregnant women and their effects on offspring

Today is generally accepted that the adverse impacts around the time of conception (increased body weight before conception) and intrauterine period (gestational diabetes, excessive weight gain during pregnancy) are associated with a predisposition for the development of chronic, especially metabolic disorders later in life: a phenomenon known as early life programming.

One of common medical complications during pregnancy is gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), which is defined as “any degree of glucose intolerance that first occurs during pregnancy”. Number of pregnancies with complications due to gestational diabetes is on the rise throughout the world, approximately every tenth pregnancy is such, but without universal screening programs many complications are unrecognized and untreated. Overweight mothers, before the start of pregnancy, and excessive weight gain during pregnancy are additional, potentially modifiable, separate risk factors for excessive fetal growth. Obese mothers (with or without the occurrence of gestational diabetes) can cause fetal overnutrition and seems to be one of the risk factors for macrosomia and metabolic disorders in childhood. Mothers with gestational diabetes also have an increased risk of stillbirth, perinatal complications and birth of children with significantly increased birth weight. Research shows that effective treatment of diabetes in mothers, as well as the optimal weight loss in obese women before pregnancy, affects the reduction of the risk of metabolic diseases in offspring.

The health habits of pregnant women are also important determinants of short-term and long-term health condition. Poor health habits (consumption of tobacco, drugs, alcohol, improper diet, insufficient physical activity and inattention around gestational obesity) as well as maternal psychosocial characteristics are associated with a series of poor pregnancy outcomes, including increased risks for the need of c-section, low birth weight and preterm birth. Several studies in Croatia have explored the impact of the mother’s lifestyle (alcohol consumption, smoking, obesity, consumption of benzodiazepines, age) on pregnancy outcomes. Thus, 11.5% of the studied pregnant women admitted alcohol consumption, 4.0% of pregnant women regularly consume alcohol, and 1.4% drinking. FAS (fetal alcohol syndrome) or PFAS (partial fetal alcohol syndrome) are also serious health problems in some rural regions Croatian.