Rapid Responses to:

PAPERS: Gian Luca Di Tanna, Aldo Rosano, and Pierpaolo Mastroiacovo Prevalence of gastroschisis at birth: retrospective study BMJ 2002; 325: 1389-1390 [Full text]

Rapid Responses: Submit a response to this article

Rapid Responses published:

Could obesity be the cause?

Rosa Corcoy   (14 December 2002)

Could obesity be the cause? 14 December 2002
Rosa Corcoy, Consultor Servei d'Endocrinologia, Hospital de Sant Pau, Sant Antoni M Claret 167, Barcelona 08025, Spain Send response to journal: Re: Could obesity be the cause?	A relationship between obesity and congenital malformations was first described in 1969 (1) and since 1990 it has been consistently confirmed in up to 10 papers. The association has been described for several categories of malformations (2) and a dose-relationship response has been described for neural tube (3) and cardiovascular (4) defects. Surprisingly, there is no agreement for ventral wall defects which have been described to be associated both to high (2) and low (5) body mass index. Nevertheless, due to the rapidly increasing prevalence of overweight and obesity in an growing number of countries (6), it is tempting to speculate that increased body mass index could underlie the reported increase in gastroschisis in several malformation registries all over the world. Is information on prepregnancy body mass index available in these registries? If this is the case, it would be worthwhile to perform the analysis. 1. Richards ID. Congenital malformations and environmental influences in pregnancy. Br J Prev Soc Med 1969; 23(4):218-225. 2. Waller DK, Mills JL, Simpson JL, Cunningham GC, Conley MR, Lassman MR, Rhoads GG. Are obese women at higher risk for producing malformed offspring? Am J Obstet Gynecol 1994; 170(2):541-548. 3. Watkins ML, Scanlon KS, Mulinare J, Khoury MJ. Is maternal obesity a risk factor for anencephaly and spina bifida? Epidemiology. 1996 ;7(5):507 -12. 4. Watkins ML, Botto LD. Maternal prepregnancy weight and congenital heart defects in offspring. Epidemiology 2001;12(4):439-446. 5. Lam PK, Torfs CP, Brand RJ. A low pregnancy body mass index is a risk factor for an offspring with gastroschisis. Epidemiology 1999 Nov;10(6):717-721. 6. Obesity: preventing and managing the global epidemic. Report of a WHO consultation. World Health Organ Tech Rep Ser 2000;894:i-xii, 1-253 Competing interests:   None declared