Prevalence of Overweight and Obesity at the Beginning of Pregnancy and Its Relationship with Maternal Complications of Pregnancy

Introduction: Although pregnancy is often seen as a period of women s lives that can improve the health behaviors of pregnant women, over 40% of women in this period are overweight or obese. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of obesity and overweight in pregnant women and its association with hypertension, preeclampsia, anemia and diabetes in pregnancy.Material and Method: This prospective cohort study was conducted on 860 pregnant women referred to health centers of Qazvin in 2016-2017. Individuals with inclusion criteria were included in the study using simple sampling. The inclusion criteria were included a willingness to participate in the study and the absence of chronic medical problems such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, kidney, liver, other chronic medical problems. The exclusion criterion was the lack of completion of the questionnaires. After completing the researcher-made questionnaires and collecting data, the data were analyzed using the Stata 12 software. A significant level of 0.05 was considered.Results: The findings showed that 42.21% of pregnant women were overweight and 8.49% were obese. The results of multivariate analysis indicated that by controlling the variables of maternal age, mother s education, father s education, mother s occupation, father s occupation, number of pregnancies, weight gain during pregnancy, fetus s gender, wanted or unwanted pregnancy and the economic status, the probability of Pregnancy Hypertension in obese women was 4.44 times [OR: 4.44, 95% CI: (1.47, 13.39), p= 0.008] and in overweight women was 2.84 times [OR: 2.84, 95% CI: (1.20, 6.73), p= 0.02] higher than normal women. The risk of preeclampsia in obese women was 3.42 times [OR: 3.42, 95% CI: (0.83, 14.06), p= 0.09] higher than that of normal women and increased by 26% [OR: 1.26, 95% CI: (0.38, 4.20), p= 0.70] in overweight women than normal women, although these increases were not statistically significant. The results also showed that the risk of anemia in obese women was 79% [OR: 0.21, 95% CI: (0.03, 1.62), p= 0.13] and in overweight women was 33% [OR: 0.67, 95% CI: (0.31, 1.41), p= 0.29] lower than in normal women, and this decrease was not statistically significant. The risk of gestational diabetes associated with BMI showed conflicting results, although not statistically significant, so that the probability of gestational diabetes in overweight women was 45% [OR: 1.45, 95% CI: (0.73, 2.87), p= 0.29] higher than normal women, while in obese women it decreased by 53% [OR: 0.47, 95% CI: (0.10, 2.21), p= 0.34] compared to normal women. Conclusion: Although overweight and obesity increase the risk of hypertension and preeclampsia during pregnancy, they are protective in the mother s anemia. In addition, it is expected that with increasing weight, the probability of developing gestational diabetes will increase, while the results of this study are controversial and obesity plays a protective role. Perhaps this is due to diet modifications and various training to prevent diabetes in pregnancy.

Keywords:

Obesity , overweight , pregnancy , gestational diabetes , anemia , hypertension , preeclampsia