WEDNESDAY, May 23, 2012 (MedPage Today) — Gestational diabetes
is often blamed for larger babies, but maternal weight may have
a much greater impact on infant birth weight than glycemia,
according to a new study.  Among women without gestational
diabetes, the significant metabolic predictors of having a
large-for-gestational-age infant included body mass index (BMI)
before and weight gain during pregnancy up to the time of a
glucose tolerance, reported Jill Hamilton, MD, from the Hospital
for Sick Children in Toronto, and colleagues online in CMAJ.
The authors also found that leptin and C-reactive protein
emerged as significant negative predictors for birth weight and
large-for-gestational-age infants. Historically, leptin, a
hormone involved in the regulation of body fat, has increased
with BMI, so the negative association is "striking and a
testimony to the complexity of issues surrounding control of
birth weight," wrote Edmond Ryan, MD, of the University of
Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, in an accompanying