Neonatal weight gain and childhood overweight risk in offspring of diabetic mothers

In normal populations, breastfeeding protects against obesity risk in later childhood, while rapid neonatal weight gain predisposes to it (1). In a cohort of 112 offspring of diabetic mothers, early neonatal breastfeeding (i.e. day 1– day 7) dose-dependently increased overweight risk (2). Therefore, we now investigated whether breastfeeding may also be associated with an increased neonatal weight gain and a consequently increased overweight risk in the second year of life. Early neonatal ingestion of diabetic breast milk was positively associated with neonatal weight gain (β=0.41, p=0.047) and with relative body…