Prepregnancy Maternal Weight and Body Mass Index of Children with and without Congenital Heart Disease

Objective: Congenital heart diseases are among the most frequent major congenital anomalies. One of the suspected reasons for congenital heart defects is overweight and obesity of mother during prepregnancy and pregnancy. We studied the relationship between maternal overweight and obesity and the risk of congenital anomaly.
Methods: All of children with congenital heart defect (164 infants with major nonsyndromic heart disease) referred to our pediatric cardiology clinic or admitted to our ward during 2011-2012 were included in this study. Controls were 158 live-born infants without any major malformations and their mothers. Mothers of these infants were studied for weight, height and body mass index (BMI).
Findings: The most frequent congenital heart disease was ventricular septal defect (39%), patent ductus arteriosus (11%), complete atrioventricular septal defect (10%), pulmonary stenosis (9.1%), and atrial septal defect (8.5%). There was no significant difference between maternal age (P=0.1), weight (P=0.8) and height (P=0.3) in the two groups. The mothers had not significantly higher BMI than that of the control mothers. Compared with underweight (BMI <18.5) and normal weight women (OR: 1.24, 95%CI: 0.40-3.89), overweight (OR: 0.98, 95%CI: 0.31-3.10) and obese women (OR: 1.16, 95%CI: 0.34-4.00) were not more likely to have an infant with a congenital heart defect.
Conclusion: This study suggests that there may not be a relation between maternal BMI and having a child with congenital heart defect.