Adriëtte Oostvogels

3 77 pBMI, lipids and offspring’s body composition Introduction Currently, 10% of the world’s school-aged children are obese or overweight and this percentage is progressively growing. 1,2 Long-term health consequences of childhood obesity are adult obesity and, in adulthood, its related morbidities including premature death, cardiovascular disease and depression. 3,4 Hence, understanding the origin of childhood obesity is important for prevention in adulthood. Lifestyle, such as physical activity, is an acknowledged determinant, but foetal metabolic priming may also be a contributing factor. Overweight or obese mothers have a higher risk of giving birth to children with a higher body mass index (BMI). 5,6 The Developmental Origin of Adult Diseases (DOHaD) hypothesis proposes that maternal metabolic perturbations, and its subsequent intrauterine conditions, can program the foetus to be more prone for obesity. 7-9 However, the exact biological mechanisms in humans need to be more explored (as evidence for the existence of such a foetal metabolic programming mainly emerged from animal studies). A more pronounced maternal lipid profile is more often observed in obese women. 10 During pregnancy this obese phenotype is even more exaggerated giving metabolic priming of the foetus an opportunity; programming of offspring obesity by maternal obesity. 9,11-15 Rodents, fed a cafeteria diet, had an exaggerated lipid profile and this intrauterine conditions negatively affected offspring’s neuroendocrine system resulting in hyperphagia, altered adipocyte function, accelerated weight gain after weaning, and adiposity. 9,16 In humans, observations from our group and others 12,15,17 show that high maternal triglyceride (TG) levels increase the risk of being large for gestational age and a low maternal TG levels increase the risk for being small for gestation, 11 both are known to be associated with childhood obesity. Against this background, we evaluated in the ABCD cohort whether the maternal lipid profile in early pregnancy is associated with maternal prepregnancy BMI (pBMI) and the occurrence of adiposity in the offspring at age 5–6 years.