Overweight women more likely to miscarry healthy babies

Overweight women are more likely to miscarry a healthy baby, according to research involving 204 women who had suffered a miscarriage. The researchers said the findings back up advice that obese women should lose weight before trying to conceive. "The excess miscarriage rate in overweight and obese women is due to the loss of chromosomally normal embryos," said Dr Inna Landres of Stanford University School of Medicine. "It's important to identify elevated BMI [body mass index] as a risk factor for miscarriage and counsel those women who are affected on the importance of lifestyle modification."Landres' team carried out genetic analyses of 204 foetuses miscarried by women with an average age of 35. Of the 153 women with normal body weight (a BMI of less than 25), 36.6% had miscarried foetuses with no chromosome defects – insertions or deletions of DNA. This compared with 52.9% of the 51 overweight women (BMI...

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