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Preventing obesity in children will be done in utero
Last reviewed: 30.06.2025
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The UK's National Health Service (NHS) will conduct an experiment on the prenatal prevention of obesity in children of obese women, the BBC reports.
According to the study's authors, 15 percent of pregnant women in the country suffer from obesity. With this disease, a woman, while carrying a child, supplies it with an excessive amount of nutrients (primarily carbohydrates), which is why the child is born with excess body weight. Such children have an increased likelihood of developing diabetes, obesity and other metabolic disorders later in life.
In developing the experimental treatment, scientists proceeded from the fact that obesity reduces sensitivity to the hormone insulin, which leads to increased blood sugar levels. To restore tissue sensitivity to insulin and reduce the concentration of glucose in a woman's blood during pregnancy, the sugar-lowering drug metformin, which is used in the treatment of type 2 diabetes, was chosen.
As part of the experiment, the drug will be prescribed to 400 pregnant women suffering from obesity to prevent the intrauterine "overfeeding" of the child.
Ian Campbell, medical director of obesity charity Weight Concern, called the research interesting but stressed that ideally women should be concerned about losing weight before they become pregnant.
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