- The children of parents who had obesity in midlife are significantly likely to also have obesity at the same age, according a new study.
- The research follows two generations of families to investigate the transmission of obesity from parents to their children.
- The mechanisms for why obesity is transmitted generationally are still not well understood, but researchers believe the factors to be both genetic and environmental.
New research from Norway is shedding light on the “intergenerational transmission” of obesity.
That is, how obesity may be passed down from parents to children.
In a forthcoming presentation at the European Congress on Obesity, scientists are reporting that children of parents who had obesity during midlife are more likely to also have obesity at the same age.
The researchers said they also discovered that parents’ body mass index (BMI) scores influenced the same measurements in their children.
“We found that offspring had a considerably increased odds of living with obesity in middle age if one or both parents lived with obesity in middle age,” Mari Mikkelsen, PhD, a fellow and a clinical dietician at UiT The Arctic University of Norway as well as an author of the research, told Medical News Today.
One expert who wasn’t involved in the research said these findings expand on previous studies on obesity and genetics.
“Several lines of research converge to strongly suggest that obesity can be transmitted from one generation to the next. Several studies have shown correlations between parents and their offspring for obesity-related measures like body mass index. This study goes a step further by demonstrating familial resemblance in middle age,” Peter Katzmarzyk, PhD, a professor of population and public health sciences at Louisiana State University and a spokesperson for The Obesity Society, told Medical News Today.
The new research hasn’t been published yet in a peer-reviewed journal.
In their presentation, the researchers state that…
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