Thursday 11 October 2018
New Research by INFANT PhD candidate, Gwinyai Masukume has been published in Scientific Reports.
The work is exploring the association between Caesarean Section (CS) and childhood obesity. Childhood obesity has been linked to CS via lack of exposure to vaginal microflora although the literature is inconsistent. The team investigated the association between CS birth and the risk of childhood obesity using the nationally representative Growing-Up-in-Ireland (GUI) cohort.
There was insufficient evidence to support the link between CS and childhood obesity.
The study recruited 11134 infants. The exposure was categorised into normal vaginal birth (VD) [reference], assisted VD, elective (planned) CS and emergency (unplanned) CS.
After further analysis of the infants weight and height the team found insufficient evidence to support a causal relationship between elective CS and childhood obesity.
FULL PAPER HERE: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-33482-z
