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Children of fat mothers are likely to die up to eight years before kids of slimmer mums, a study suggests.
Experts have discovered that obese women have shorter telomeres, a part of DNA vital to maintaining health.
The research is the first to find a link between a mum’s body mass index and her child’s life expectancy.
Obesity, usually defined as having a BMI of 30 or over, is increasingly common in the UK. One in five pregnant women are now in this category.
Prof Tim Nawrot of Hasselt University in Belgium, which did the study, said: “Compared with newborns of mothers with a normal BMI, newborns of women with obesity are older on a molecular level, because shortened telomere lengths mean that their cells have shorter lifespans.
“So maintaining a healthy BMI during a woman’s reproductive age may promote molecular longevity in the offspring.”
The study, published today in journal BMC Medicine, suggests that babies of mothers with a BMI of up to 25 could live eight years longer than those whose mothers’ BMI was over 30.
Prof Nawrot added: “The public health impact of our findings is considerable as in affluent societies about 30% of women of reproductive age are overweight.”
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