THE EFFECT OF PREPREGNANCY WEIGHT, WEIGHT GAIN DURING PREGNANCY, AND MATERNAL METABOLISM ON THE SIZE OF INFANTS BORN TO OBESE, GLUCOSE-TOLERANT WOMEN

Infants born to glucose-intolerant women and women who are overweight before pregnancy are heavier (1, 50, 51, 108, 109, 111). It is unclear if glucose intolerance and maternal weight act independently to influence birth size.;Very overweight, glucose-tolerant women and glucose-intolerant women had infants with greater birth weights and body mass indices (g/cm;Increasing prepregnancy size and increasing weight gain were each independent predictors of infant birth weight in the glucose-intolerant women and the normal weight, glucose-tolerant women but not in the two overweight, glucose-tolerant groups.;Study ;In Study ;Fasting metabolism and the response to intravenous glucose injections was studied in 15 glucose-tolerant women in late pregnancy. There was no difference in metabolism or infant size when women were grouped by their pregravid size or by their weight gains. When women were divided into groups using the size of their infant, we observed differences in glucose disposal in those women who had larger infants (;This second study showed that women who had larger infants had a subtle form of glucose-intolerance. Poor correlations between increasing prepregnancy weight or increasing weight gain and increasing infant size could be caused by this subtle alteration in glucose disposal.