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. 2016 Sep 30:6:34248.
doi: 10.1038/srep34248.

Maternal Body Mass Index and Risk of Autism Spectrum Disorders in Offspring: A Meta-analysis

Ying Wang  1   2 , Shiming Tang  1   2 , Shunsheng Xu  1   2 , Shenhong Weng  1   2 , Zhongchun Liu  1   2   3
Affiliations

Maternal Body Mass Index and Risk of Autism Spectrum Disorders in Offspring: A Meta-analysis

Ying Wang et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Controversial results of the association between maternal body mass index (BMI) and risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in offspring were reported among several studies. This meta-analysis was conducted to estimate the overall association between maternal BMI and risk of ASD in offspring. PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library were searched until January 2016. Cohort and case-control studies addressing the association between maternal BMI and risk of ASD in offspring were included. We used random-effect models to estimate the summary relative risks (RRs), we also performed a dose-response meta-analysis to estimate the trend from the correlated log RR estimates across levels of BMI quantitatively. Totally, 6 cohort studies and 1 case-control study involving 8,403 cases and 509,167 participants were included for analysis. The summary RR (95% confidence interval) for ASD in offspring in relation to maternal underweight, overweight, and obesity vs. normal weight during pre-pregnancy or pregnancy, was 1.07 (0.93, 1.23), 1.28 (1.19, 1.36) and 1.36 (1.03, 1.78), respectively. A linear dose-response relationship was found, with a pooled RR of 1.16 (1.01, 1.33) for each 5 kg/m2. increment in maternal BMI. The present study suggests that excessive maternal BMI is associated with increased ASD risk in offspring.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. A forest plot of the association between maternal underweight and ASD risk.
Figure 2
Figure 2. A forest plot of the association between maternal overweight and ASD risk.
Figure 3
Figure 3. A forest plot of the association between maternal obesity and ASD risk.
Figure 4
Figure 4. Dose-response analysis for maternal BMI and ASD risk.
The solid line and the long dashed lines represent the estimated relative risk and corresponding 95%CI, respectively.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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