Risk factors in the first 1000 days of life associated with childhood obesity

A recently published systematic review in Obesity Reviews examined the risk factors in the first 1000 days of life associated with childhood obesity.

The review examined 177 publications, which included 1,879,971 children from 37 predominantly high-income countries. They identified 23 consistently associated risk factors. They found:

'Strongest risk factors were: higher maternal prepregnancy weight (n = 28/31 publications with positive associations), higher gestational weight gain (n = 18/21), maternal smoking during pregnancy (n = 23/29), higher birth weight (n = 20/28), large‐size‐for‐gestational‐age‐at‐birth (n = 17/18), no breastfeeding (n = 20/31), and higher infant weight gain (n = 12/12).'

The most commonly reported risk factor for childhood obesity based on pregnancy was birthweight. The observational studies reported lower risk with duration of breastfeeding but the RCT did not show this. There was an acknowledgement in the paper that the short-term nature of many of the studies, risk of confounding or the number of people who dropped out made the level of data 'generally moderate'.

This study underlines the importance of a multi-pronged approach to the prevention of childhood obesity, but also highlights 23 risk factors which could be focused on to support this work.  

You can read the full paper in Obesity Reviews

Reference:

Blaauwendraad, S. M., Kamphuis, A. S. J., Javier Ruiz-Ojeda, F., Brandimonte-Hernández, M., Flores-Ventura, E., Abrahamse-Berkeveld, M., Collado, M. C., van Diepen, J. A., Iozzo, P., Knipping, K., van Loo-Bouwman, C. A., Gil, Á., & Gaillard, R. (2025). Risk Factors in the First 1000 Days of Life Associated With Childhood Obesity: A Systematic Review and Risk Factor Quality Assessment. Obesity reviews : an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity, 27(2), e70025. https://doi.org/10.1111/obr.70025