Kids of Obese Parents May Face Delayed Development

It's a well-established principle that being obese affects your health. But what if being obese could influence the health of your kids?

A new study from National Institutes of Health researchers suggests that parental obesity is linked to developmental delays in children.

The study, published this month in Pediatrics, found that by age 3, children of obese mothers (with a body mass index of 30 or more) had a 70 percent higher likelihood of failing a fine motor skills test compared to kids of normal-weight mothers (or those with a body mass index of less than 25). Children of obese fathers had a 75 percent higher chance of failing that test.

Children with two obese parents were almost three times as likely to fail the test's problem-solving section.

To draw their conclusions, the NIH researchers used data from the Upstate KIDS study, which examined the effects of fertility treatment on child development between birth and age 3. It includes more than 5,000 women, who all enrolled between 2008 and 2010, about four months after giving birth in New York State. New York City was not part of the study.

Upon enrollment, mothers provided health and weight information pre- and post-pregnancy in addition to their partners' weight.

Parents were instructed to test their child's development via a series of activities designed to assess skills like communication, problem-solving and fine and gross motor abilities. They then completed questionnaires reporting the results. The children were tested seven times: Once at 4 months and then at various intervals through age 3.

But how could a parent's weight affect a child's development?

The NIH researchers don't have a concrete answer just yet. They do note, however, that animal studies suggest that obesity during pregnancy could "promote" inflammation – which could, in turn, have an effect on a fetal brain. They also say that studies suggest a possible effect of obesity on gene expression in sperm.

"Our study wasn't designed to prove cause and effect," Dr. Edwina Yeung, one of the Pediatrics study authors, told CNN. "At this point, we only have correlations between parents' BMI and children's scores on a screening questionnaire."

If such a link does exist, parental weight may be a point of consideration for doctors examining the development of young children, according to the authors.

"It's really important to stress that these results need to be confirmed by other studies," Yeung also told CNN