In Sweden and other high-income nations, women’s health during pregnancy and childbirth varies greatly. Women who have migrated to Sweden from other countries are more likely to experience major problems than Swedish-born women. Complications are more common among women born in certain places of the world. It’s unclear why, although a variety of health-related issues can contribute to this discrepancy. One probable factor is body weight. When pregnant, migrant women from specific regions are more likely to be underweight, overweight, or obese (a illness characterized by a BMI of 30 or above).

Body Weight Influences Pregnancy Complications

“We know that overweight and obesity are associated with numerous problems during pregnancy and labor in women born in Sweden. As a result, we wanted to see if differences in body weight could explain any of the disparities in pregnancy problems among women born in different countries. If you know there are health inequalities, you want to know why, so you can do something about them in the next step,” says Pontus Henriksson, senior associate professor at Linköping University’s Department of Health, Medicine, and Caring Sciences, who led the study published in The Lancet Public Health.

What is novel about this study, conducted by researchers at Linköping University and Karolinska Institutet, is that the researchers were able to estimate how many complications, such as gestational diabetes, could be avoided if all women were normal weight when they became pregnant.

“For example, we determined that approximately half of all cases of gestational diabetes might be averted. This applies to both Swedish and foreign-born women,” explains Maryam Shirvanifar, a Ph.D. student in the current project and the study’s first author.

Healthy Body Weight Reduces Pregnancy Complications

The researchers believe that promoting a healthy weight can benefit all women, regardless of where they were born.

“A healthy weight benefits everyone. Pontus Henriksson believes that the earlier obesity is detected, the better, because it is difficult to treat after it has developed.

The study presents a confusing picture. The importance of body weight varies depending on the difficulties. For example, high body weight is more likely to cause gestational diabetes than other issues.

But what about being underweight during early pregnancy? How does it increase the risks? To the researchers’ surprise, being underweight does not appear to have a major impact on the consequences studied.

From 2000 to 2020, the researchers tracked nearly two million pregnancies, which accounted for nearly all births in Sweden. The researchers looked at eight problems that can occur during pregnancy, labor, or both. Using data from different national registries, scientists were able to analyze the association between a woman’s BMI at her first prenatal visit and complications based on where the mother was born.

In their investigations, the researchers considered a variety of criteria, including socioeconomic data. However, because the current study uses register data, some factors that could affect a woman’s health during pregnancy and childbirth, such as healthcare quality, communication barriers, stress related to migration, and differences in health-promoting behaviour, were not investigated. As a result, more research is needed to investigate additional factors that can affect health during pregnancy in various cultures.

References:

1. Adverse pregnancy outcomes attributable to overweight and obesity across maternal birth regions: a Swedish population-based cohort study
   (Adverse pregnancy outcomes attributable to overweight and obesity across maternal birth regions: a Swedish population-based cohort study
   Shirvanifar, Maryam et al.
   The Lancet Public Health, Volume 9, Issue 10, e776 – e786)

Source-Medindia