Risk For Overweight Child Identifiable During Infancy

Conclusion

This systematic review identified several early life risk factors for childhood overweight and provides high quality evidence that could be used by HCPs to identify infants at greatest risk. We found strong evidence that early rapid weight gain, high birth weight, maternal pre-pregnancy overweight and maternal smoking in pregnancy increased the likelihood of childhood overweight. There was also a moderate protective effect of breastfeeding on childhood overweight. There was some evidence to suggest that the early introduction of solid foods was associated with childhood overweight. Several factors were found to have mixed, inconclusive or no association with childhood overweight as follows: breastfeeding duration, maternal marital status, parity, socioeconomic status, maternal age, maternal education, maternal depression, infant ethnicity, delivery type, maternal postpartum weight loss, gestational weight gain and infant temperament. Our future research will focus on exploring the validity and feasibility of identifying infants at risk of developing childhood overweight in clinical practice.