Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Apr 28, 2022; 28(16): 1681-1691
Published online Apr 28, 2022. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v28.i16.1681
Association of maternal obesity and gestational diabetes mellitus with overweight/obesity and fatty liver risk in offspring
Jing Zeng, Feng Shen, Zi-Yuan Zou, Rui-Xu Yang, Qian Jin, Jing Yang, Guang-Yu Chen, Jian-Gao Fan
Jing Zeng, Feng Shen, Zi-Yuan Zou, Rui-Xu Yang, Qian Jin, Jing Yang, Guang-Yu Chen, Jian-Gao Fan, Department of Gastroenterology, Xinhua Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200092, China
Jian-Gao Fan, Shanghai Key Lab of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition, Shanghai 200092, China
Author contributions: Zeng J and Shen F contributed equally to this work; Zeng J, Shen F, and Yang RX carried out the experiments; Zeng J, Shen F, Yang RX, Jin Q, Yang J, and Chen GY contributed to acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of the data; Zeng J and Zou ZY wrote the paper; Fan JG made critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content.
Supported by Collaborative Innovation Program of Shanghai Municipal Health Commission, No. 2020CXJQ01; National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 81873565 and No. 82100605; SJTU Trans-med Awards Research, No. 20190104; Star Program of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, No. YG2021QN54; WBE Liver Fibrosis Foundation, No. CFHPC2020061; and Hospital Funded Clinical Research, Xinhua Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, No. 17CSK04 and No. 15LC06.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the ethics committees of all hospitals involved. All procedures were performed in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008.
Informed consent statement: Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Jian-Gao Fan, MD, PhD, Professor, Department of Gastroenterology, Xinhua Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, No. 1665 Kongjiang Road, Shanghai 200092, China. fanjiangao@xinhuamed.com.cn
Received: August 29, 2021
Peer-review started: August 29, 2021
First decision: October 16, 2021
Revised: October 30, 2021
Accepted: March 16, 2022
Article in press: March 16, 2022
Published online: April 28, 2022
Processing time: 237 Days and 18.3 Hours
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background

Associations were found among childhood obesity, fatty liver and adverse outcomes such as diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and cardiovascular diseases in adulthood. It is important to identify relevant risk factors and intervene as early as possible.

Research motivation

We aimed to discover the possible relationship between metabolic factors in mothers and offspring.

Research objectives

We aimed to estimate the association of maternal obesity and gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) with overweight/obesity and fatty liver risk in offspring.

Research methods

The mothers in the study all underwent a 75 g oral glucose tolerance test at 24-28 wk of gestation, and their offspring completed follow-up at 8 years of age. An examination was prospectively conducted in offspring using a FibroScan-502 with an M probe (Echosens, Paris, France).

Research results

A total of 430 mother-child pairs were included in the analysis. The prevalence of overweight, obesity and fatty liver in offspring increased significantly across maternal BMI quartiles and among mothers with GDM (all P < 0.05). In the multiple logistic regression analysis, after adjustment for variables, the OR for fatty liver in offspring was 8.26 (95%CI: 2.38-28.75) for participants with maternal obesity and GDM.

Research conclusions

Maternal obesity can increase the odds of overweight/obesity and fatty liver in offspring, and GDM status also increases the odds of overweight/obesity in offspring.

Research perspectives

To prevent these intergenerational predisposing factors, weight management and glycemic control before and during pregnancy need to be emphasized for primary prevention of pediatric fatty liver.