Research: Babies born to anorexic mothers are more likely to be underweight

According to a new study, pregnant mothers with the eating disorder anorexia nervosa are five times more likely to have underweight children.
Results from the 38th Annual Meeting of ESHRE also show a noticeably increased risk (298%) of preterm delivery and a more than doubled chance (341%) of placental abruption. In contrast, moms who do not have anorexia usually struggle with a chronic mental disorder. Ido Feferkorn, MD, of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, will go into detail about the analysis’s findings. Data from more than 9 million women, both with and without anorexia, were used to create this severe psychological disorder that is characterised by hunger and malnutrition.

Mothers and Pregnancy

Anorexia nervosa during pregnancy increases the risk of having underweight children by five times, according to a new research.
The 38th Annual Meeting of ESHRE studies also show a considerably increased risk of preterm delivery (298%) and a more than doubled incidence of placental abruption (341%). Mothers who do not have anorexia, which is typically a chronic mental disorder, are compared with those who do. Ido Feferkorn, MD, of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, will explain the specifics of the analysis. Based on information from more than 9 million women, both with and without anorexia, this severe mental disorder, characterised by hunger and malnutrition, was identified.

Dr. Feferkorn emphasised the findings on the incidence of small-for-gestational-age newborns in particular as being “shockingly larger” when compared to the results for the children of women with a healthy weight.

Eating disorders can impair menstruation, even though anorexic women can still conceive spontaneously or with the use of ovulation-stimulating fertility drugs. The results of the study, in Dr. Feferkorn’s opinion, should serve as a grave health caution on how these individuals should be treated both during and after pregnancy.

He said that treating malnourished women is an issue that many fertility experts face. Alternatively, you might refuse to do so and deny these patients the joy of parenthood. Clinics need to be aware of how severely adverse pregnancy outcomes affect anorexic patients who do become pregnant.

The information was gathered from a huge, publicly available database of US inpatient hospital treatment records. We included pregnancies where a woman had anorexia during pregnancy (n = 214) as well as pregnancies where she did not (n = 9,096,574).

Overall, the results showed that pregnant anorexic women often had very bad outcomes.

They also showed that in addition to their eating disorders, these persons were more likely to smoke, have thyroid illness, be Caucasian, have better salaries, and have other mental diseases.

Other conditions that can impact pregnant women did not have different rates. These included postpartum haemorrhage, gestational diabetes, chorioamnionitis, placenta previa, and hypertensive diseases. There was no higher need for a Caesarean section than in women without anorexia.

One of the study’s limitations is that the investigators were unable to assess the severity of anorexia or treatment compliance. Dr. Feferkorn states that one broad conclusion of the results is that anorexia should be assessed in women before they get reproductive therapy.

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