WEDNESDAY, Oct. 23, 2024 (HealthDay News) — Offspring of mothers with an eating disorder or prepregnancy body mass index (BMI) outside the normal weight range have an increased risk for psychiatric disorders, according to a study published online Oct. 22 in JAMA Network Open.

Ida A.K. Nilsson, Ph.D., from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, and colleagues conducted a population-based cohort study using Finnish national registers to examine the association of maternal eating disorders and prepregancy BMI with offspring psychiatric diagnoses.

The study included 392,098 mothers, of whom 1.60 percent had a history of an eating disorder and 5.89 and 53.13 percent had prepregnancy underweight and overweight or obesity, respectively. The researchers found that 16.43 percent of the 649,956 offspring had received a neurodevelopmental or psychiatric diagnosis. Even after adjusting for potential covariates, maternal eating disorders, prepregnancy underweight, and overweight or obesity were associated with most of the studied mental diagnoses in offspring. The largest effect sizes were seen for maternal eating disorders not otherwise specified with offspring sleep disorders (hazard ratio, 3.34) and social functioning and tic disorders (hazard ratio, 2.79), and for maternal severe prepregnancy obesity with offspring intellectual disabilities (hazard ratio, 2.04). The risks for offspring having other feeding disturbances of childhood and infancy (e.g., hazard ratio, 4.53 for maternal eating disorders) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and conduct disorder (e.g., hazard ratio, 2.27 for maternal anorexia nervosa) were further increased in association with adverse birth outcomes.

“Furthering the knowledge about these associations and underlying biological mechanisms can provide information of value for the development of relevant management and treatment,” the authors write.

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