An international research team co-led by the University of Southern California has found that increased exposure to air pollution in three months before conception is associated with an increased risk of childhood obesity up to two years after birth.
In depth
For the study, published in ‘Environmental Research‘ and carried out together with Duke University (United States) and Fudan University, in Shanghai (China), the experts have studied 5,834 mother-child pairs who were recruited from fertility clinics in Shanghai, which made pre-pregnancy analysis possible.
Researchers developed state-of-the-art machine learning models to estimate air pollution exposure during the period before conception. They used a combination of satellite data, pollutant simulations and meteorological factors to estimate the daily exposure to pollution in the home of each participant.
More details
After birth, researchers also they collected electronic medical record data on children’s weight and height at intervals from three months to two years. From these data, they calculated the rate of change in weight and they compared to participants who had a low level of exposure to pollution with others with high exposure.
Children whose parents had been exposed to higher pollution before conception showed a body mass index (BMI) slightly higher than those whose parents had not been so exposed. Although the data obtained they don’t show a big differencethey do confirm that Previous exposure to air pollution may influence children’s risk of developing obesity.
To take into account
“These findings imply that the previous three months to conception are important and that people planning to have children should consider take measures to reduce your exposure to air pollution to reduce their children’s risk of obesity,” said Jiawen LiaoPhD, postdoctoral research associate in population sciences and public health at the Keck School of Medicine and first author of the study.
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