FRIDAY, Sept. 21, 2018 (HealthDay News) — Lifestyle interventions focusing on diet and physical activity result in less excess gestational weight gain (GWG) among women with overweight and obesity, according to a study published in the September issue of Obesity.
Alan M. Peaceman, M.D., from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, and colleagues randomized 1,150 women with overweight or obesity across seven clinical centers to different lifestyle intervention strategies (diet and physical activity) or standard care.
The researchers found that the percent of women with excess GWG per week was significantly lower in the intervention group versus the standard care group (61.8 versus 75.0 percent; odds ratio, 0.52). The intervention group also had lower total GWG from enrollment to 36 weeks of gestation (mean difference, −1.59 kg). Results across individual trials at the seven sites were similar. There were no significant differences between the groups with regards to preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, cesarean delivery, or birth weight.
“This modest beneficial effect was consistent across diverse intervention modalities in a large, racially and socioeconomically diverse U.S. population of pregnant women,” the authors write.
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