Weight gain in pregnancy: Definitions and consequences of abnormal patterns

The weight gain of the pregnant women is the end result of many, usually physiologic metabolic changes occuring during pregnancy and is prone to wide induvidual variation. Strict control of weight gain during pregnancy as praticed worldwide until mid seventies gave way to a more liberal approach following reports revealing a direct relationship with suboptimal weight gain and low birth weight and prematuıity. Currently recommendations of weight gain during pregnancy are based on the prepregnacy body mass index . Roughly a gain of less than 10 kg is associated with an abrupt inerease in the incidence of low birth weight infants whereas a gain of more than 16 kg is associated with an inerease in maerosomia and cesarean section rate.Another late sec)uele of excessive weight gain during pregnancy is the the retainment of the weight gain after delivery, which oecurs more frecjuently among black race. Thoııgh the meta-analysis of mostly observational studies done so far suggests optimum maternal and fetal oııtcome Tor pregnancies with weight gains within the recommended limits, the recognition of a real causative relationship and definition of abnormal patterns in temporal and compositional ternıs stili needs large scale, well designed, prospective comparative studies.