Obesity in children linked to heavier birth weight: Study

Recent study has found out that babies, who weighed heavier at birth, are likely to be obese when they are in kindergarten to second grade (age 5 to 8 years).

It has been reported in the study that at each grade level and for both preterm and term children, children who were heavy as infants remained heavier than children born at normal birth weight.

The study included 828 preterm children and 9358 term children.

The findings suggest that counseling may be appropriate early in life for families of large infants to help prevent future obesity.

"We are hopeful that these data will be helpful for pediatricians, who can identify children with large birth weight and recommend healthy lifestyle practices to these families early on to try to avoid later obesity," said Mark DeBoer, senior author of the study.

The study was published in Pediatric Obesity study.