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Parents take pride in chubby babies, but a study led by Elsie Taveras, MD, MPH, co-director of Children’s One Step Ahead Program, finds that infants who grow rapidly in weight-for-length during their first six months are more apt to be obese by age 3.
The study, published in the April Pediatrics, mined data from Project Viva, a large ongoing study of pregnant women and their children. Focusing on 559 mother/child pairs, Dr. Taveras and colleagues measured not just the amount of weight gained relative to length, but how quickly infants put it on.
The connection between rapid increases in weight-for-length and later obesity was striking, even after adjustment for factors like prematurity and low birth weight. A 6-month-old infant weighing 18.4 pounds, for example, would have an estimated 40 percent higher risk of obesity at age 3 than a 16.9-pound infant with the same birth weight.
These findings suggest that our cultural affirmation of infants who top the growth charts may be excessive, and that infancy may be a critical period during which to prevent childhood obesity, Dr. Taveras says.
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