A mother's weight gain during pregnancy is vital to the baby's health. A new study reveals that low or insufficient weight gain can likely increase the risk of the development of schizophrenia in children.
The study, published in the JAMA Psychiatry, used data of 526,042 babies born in Sweden in the 1980s. From these, experts found 2,910 had non-affective psychoses or some form of mental disorder, including schizophrenia, and 704 had defined schizophrenia.
Some 23,627 did not have any psychoses. Those who did, however, had 6.32 percent of mothers with a pregnancy weight gain of only 17.6 pounds or 8 kilograms, per EurekAlert.
Other studies have shown the risk of schizophrenia and other mental disorders was higher among babies exposed to famine because their mothers have not been well-fed. This recent study, however, presented data that even progressive and industrialized countries like Sweden have mothers who do not meet the right standards of diet.
Lead researcher Euan Mackay, however, said that their findings do not prove that pregnant moms with low weight gain will have schizophrenic babies. The study only implied the association between the disorder and the mother's health. Mackay further said that while malnutrition is a factor, the mothers in the study who gained little weight might have existing medical conditions.
"This is something to investigate because we now have a lot of studies relating starvation to schizophrenia across the globe," Dr. Ezra Susser from Columbia University said, per The Health Cast. "There's something, but we don't know what it is yet."
One thing is clear, though, and that is a pregnant mother's diet should not be taken for granted. Mothers with a baby on the way should always eat the right amounts of fruits, vegetables and proteins. "Weight gain outside Institute of Medicine guidelines may have deleterious effects on offspring neurodevelopment," the study authors wrote in their findings.
