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Cesarean birth is not associated with early childhood body mass index
Author(s) -
Smithers L. G.,
Mol B. W.,
Jamieson L.,
Lynch J. W.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
pediatric obesity
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.226
H-Index - 69
eISSN - 2047-6310
pISSN - 2047-6302
DOI - 10.1111/ijpo.12180
Subject(s) - medicine , anthropometry , body mass index , confounding , obstetrics , population , pregnancy , birth weight , obesity , pediatrics , gynecology , genetics , environmental health , biology
Summary Cesarean birth leads to a markedly different microbiome compared to vaginal birth, and the microbiome has been implicated in childhood obesity. Among mothers who had a previous cesarean, we compared anthropometry of 3‐ to 6‐year‐old children who were subsequently born by cesarean section versus vaginal birth. This large population‐based study involved linking de‐identified administrative perinatal and anthropometric data. Children's weight and height were collected at community‐based clinics and converted to age‐ and sex‐adjusted z ‐scores of height‐for‐age (HFAz), weight‐for‐age (WFAz) and BMI‐for‐age (BMIz). The average treatment effect (ATE) of cesarean versus vaginal birth was calculated from augmented inverse probability weighted analyses accounting for a wide range of confounding variables. There was little evidence of an effect of cesarean birth on HFAz (ATE = 0.26 95%CI −0.35, 0.87, n = 3993), WFAz (ATE = 0.35, 95%CI −0.19, 0.89, n = 4817) or BMIz (ATE = 0.11, 95%CI −0.25, 0.46, n = 3909). Cesarean section was not associated with anthropometry among children aged 3–6 years.