Oh baby, let’s weight and see

London TREATING obese pregnant women with a diabetes drug does not stop their babies from being born overweight, a study has found.

Heavier babies are more likely to grow into overweight adults, and doctors had hoped the treatment would help to reduce obesity rates as well as lower the number of difficult births.

The research, led by the University of Edinburgh, test- ed whether treating overweight mothers-to-be with the diabetes drug metformin, which helps to regulate blood sugar, would reduce the weight of their babies. They treated 226 obese pregnant women with the medication from their second trimester until their babies were born.

But they found there was no difference in the weight of babies born to mothers who received the treatment compared with a group of 223 women who received a dummy pill.

Metformin also had no effect on the number of birth complications, such as miscarriages and still births. — AP