Maternal and early childhood risk factors for overweight and obesity among low-income predominantly black children at age five years: A prospective cohort study

Objective. to identify maternal and early childhood risk factors for obesity and overweight among children at age 5 in the state of alabama. methods. we recruited 740 mothers during early pregnancy from university of alabama prenatal clinics in a prospective cohort study and followed them throughout pregnancy. we followed their children from birth until 5 years of age. the main outcome measure was obesity (bmi for age and sex ≥ 95th percentile) at 5 years of age. we used poisson regression with robust variance estimation to compute risk ratio (rr). results. at the 5th year of followup,71 (9.6%) of the children were obese and 85 (11.5%) were overweight (bmi ≥ 85th-<95th percentile). in multivariable analysis,maternal prepregnancy overweight (rr: 2.30,95% ci: 1.29-4.11) and obesity (rr: 2.53,95% ci: 1.49-4.31),and child's birth weight >85th percentile (rr: 2.04,95% ci: 1.13-3.68) were associated with childhood obesity. maternal prepregnancy bmi,birth weight,and maternal smoking were associated with the child being overweight 1-12 cigarettes/day versus 0 cigarettes/day (rr: 1.40,95% ci: 1.02-1.91). conclusion. children of overweight and obese mothers,and children with higher birth weight,are more likely to be obese and overweight at age 5. maternal smoking 1-12 cigarettes per day is associated with the child being overweight. © 2012 naveed zafar janjua et al.