Overweight African-American Women Deliver More Babies Preterm

Pregnant African-American women who are obese face a greater risk of delivering their child preterm compared to other races, say researchers at Boston University School of Medicine.

According to the press release annoucing the study, a baby who is born at less than 37 weeks of gestation is considered to be preterm, a plight that occurs more often among black women than white women and is a leading cause of infant morbidity and mortality in the U.S. Moreover, the authors explain that obesity has also been linked to intrauterine infections, systematic inflammation, dyslipidemia, and hyperinsulinemia, all factors which may increase the changes of delivering a baby preterm.

Using data from the Slone Epidemiology Center's Black Women's Health Study, a team of researchers, led by Lauren Wise, ScD, an associate professor of epidemiology at Boston University, compared mothers of over 1,000 infants born 3 or more weeks early to mother of more than 7,000 full-term infants. Both types of preterm births, medically-indicated and spontaneous (occuring for reasons other than medically-related) were examined.

The findings revealed that obesity increased the risk of medically-indicated pre-term birth and very early spontaneous pre-term birth (<32 weeks), and underweight increased the risk of both pre-term birth subtypes.

"Our data suggest that it is especially important for obese women to adhere to the Institute of Medicine's guidelines for pregnancy weight gain to reduce their risk of preterm birth," Wise concluded.

The study's findings appear online in Epidemiology.

Fight Against Childhood Obesity Begins During Infant Years, Especially for Minority Kids

Risk factors for obesity begins at infancy, according to a study online published March 1 in the journal Pediatrics.

According to the press release annoucing the findings, while most obesity prevention programs - including the national initiative recently launced by First Lady Michelle Obama - target kids age 8 and older, this new study reports that beginning during infancy certain factors place children at higher risk for obesity.

In a study lead by Elsie Taveras, MD, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of population medicine at Harvard Medical School, researchers studied 1,826 mother-child pairs from pregnancy until the child was 5 years old. Women wre interviewed at the end of their first and second trimesters, during the first few days after delivery, and when their children were 6 months and 3 years old. Questionnaires were also completed by the parents when their children were 1,2, and 4 years old.

The study revealed that when compared to Caucasian women, minority women were more likely to be overweight when they became pregnant and Hispanic women had a higher rate of gestational diabetes, both of which are risk factors for childhood obesity.

Futhermore, when other risk factors during a child's first 5 years was examined, researchers found that African-American and Hispanic infants were more likely to be born small, gain excess weight after birth, begin eating sold food before 4 months, and sleep less, compared to their Caucasian counterparts.

The study also suggested that during their pre-school years, minority children consume more fast food, drink more sugar-sweetened beverages, and are more likely to have TVs in their rooms, compared to Caucasian children.

While some believe that limited access to health care, poverty, and low education levels cause these risk factors, Dr. Taveras and her colleagues found that, when adjusted for socioeconomic status, the prevalence of many of the risk factors remained the same.
"This early life period - prenatal, infancy, to age 5 - is a key period for childhood obesity prevention, especial for minority children," said Dr. Taveras. "Almost every single risk factor in that period before age 2, including in the prenatal period, was disproportionately higher among minority children."

Sleep Duration Effects to Belly Fat in Minority Kids

Getting too little sleep or too much sleep can lead to increases in belly fat among African-American and Hispanic young adults, according to researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

For the study lead by Kristen Hairson, MD, assistant professor of internal medicain at Wake Forest Universeity School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C., researchers collected information from 332 African-Americans and 775 Hispanics, 18-81 years of age. On average, participants slept for 6.7 hours each night. Less than 20% of the participants reported sleeping five hours or elss per night, 55% preported sleeping 6-7 hours nightly, and 28% averaged 8 or more hours of sleep each night.

Results of the study revealed that among those 40 years old or younger, both short and long seep durations resulted in significant increaes in body mass index (BMI), subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT), and visceral adipose tissue (VAT) fat accumulation.

"Appropriate amounts of sleep are important for maintence of healthy weight," Dr. Hairson stated. " In a group of African-American and Hispanic participants, those who slept less than this had greater increases in belly fat over a five-year period."

Proposed explainations of the findings suggest that shorter hours of sleep may promote increased caloric intake via increased hunger or by lowering energy expenditure. Additionallly, the authors suggested that it is imporant for health care providers to encourage patients to get adequate amounts of sleep.

The findings of this study was published in the March 1 issue of Sleep.