Children born to women who are obese have a higher risk of landing in a hospital with a severe infection, a new study says.
Infants under 1 year of age have a 41% increased risk of hospitalization for infection if their mom was severely obese during pregnancy, researchers reported Tuesday in the journal BMJ Medicine.
And that risk extends into childhood and adolescence, with 5- to 15-year-olds 53% more likely to require hospital treatment for an infection, the study found.
"Most excess hospital admissions for infection were caused by respiratory and gastrointestinal infections, and multisystem viral infections," wrote a team led by Victoria Coathup, a researcher in epidemiology with the University of Oxford in Britain.
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