The Hindu on Wednesday.
The study found that the rate of C-section was 43.4% (26.5% emergency, 16.9% elective) among the 638 mothers. While 14.9% of the overall infants were overweight at one year of age, among the 108 babies delivered by elective C-section, 25% became overweight.
“Babies delivered by elective C-section had 2.44 times higher risk of being overweight compared to those born by vaginal delivery. However, no such association was found for emergency C-section,” explained Deepa R., researcher from IIPH, who is the co-author of the study.
According to the study, one exposure in the first 1,000 days that has been associated with excess infant weight gain and childhood overweight and obesity is C-section delivery. While several mechanisms may explain this association, the leading hypothesis is that interruption of mother-to-newborn microbiota transfer drives the association of C-section with overweight and obesity. Consistent with this hypothesis, studies have found that gut microbiota may play an etiologic role in the development of overweight, as well as under-nutrition and C-section is highly deterministic of the infant gut microbiota development.