Background: The first 1000 days of life is a critical period of development1. Observational2,3 and epidemiological studies4,5 suggests that babies born to mothers with pre-existing metabolic disease are more likely to be born large for gestational age (LGA) and ‘prone’ to metabolic disease in later life6.
Overall Aims: To develop a model that identifies a maternal phenotype that best predicts a mothers’ risk of giving birth to an LGA offspring.
Specific Aims:
Methodology: This is a prospective cohort study. We recruited n=501 pregnant women at <20±4 completed weeks of gestation. We collected maternal medical history and anthropometric data. Only women who had a livebirth (n=480) were included in the analysis.
Results: The mean (sd) age was 35.1 (4.6) years. 69% (331/480) women were Caucasian. 51.0% (245/480) were nulliparous. More than a quarter of the cohort had pre-existing metabolic disease including obesity 23% (107/480), diabetes 3.5% (17/480) or hypertension 11/480 (2.3%). 8.3% (40/480) of women had a LGA offspring in a previous pregnancy.
Of singleton offspring, 17% (79/464) were LGA. The strongest predictors of LGA were previous LGA offspring (bias corrected OR4.70 (2.48-8.93)) and class 3 obesity (bias corrected OR 3.24 (1.49-7.07). Using maternal history and anthropometric data, we could predict the rate of LGA with modest reliability (AUC=0.707).
Conclusions: Using only maternal baseline history and anthropometric data, we could predict LGA offspring with modest reliability.