ABSTRACT
The necessity of adequate pregnancy weight gain for optimal pregnancy outcome has been recognized. However, the specific components of pregnancy weight gain that might be critical for fetal growth and development have not been elucidated clearly. The purpose of this study was to investigate the correlation of pregnancy weight gain and birth weight with serum leptin levels in women delivered newborns. The subjects were recruited from K university hospital. The subject's characteristic data (age 32.1+/-4.3 y, gestational age 39.5+/-1.1wk, pre-pregnancy weight 58.0+/-8.6 kg, pregnancy weight gain 12.7+/-5.5 kg, newborn's birth weight 3.5+/-0.5 kg) were gathered. Maternal dietary assessment was carried out at the end of pregnancy. After delivery, blood samples were collected from 20 mother-newborn pairs. Serum levels of various lipids and leptin were analyzed. Maternal daily consumption of iron, zinc, folate were lower than the RDA of each nutrient and index of nutritional quality was less than 1 showing that the quality of maternal diet was low. The levels of serum leptin of mothers and infants were 10.2+/-6.7 ng/ ml and 1.7+/-0.6 ng/ml, respectively. The serum leptin concentrations of male infants (1.9+/-0.7 ng /ml) were not different from that of females (1.7+/-0.5 ng/ml). A negative correlation was found between the maternal pre-pregnant BMI and weight gain during pregnancy (r=-0.54, p<0.05). There was a positive correlation between the pregnancy weight gain and the newborn's birth weight (r = 0.59, p<0.01). There were also positive correlation between newborn's birth weight and newborn's serum leptin levels (r =0.57, p<0.01). No correlations were found between maternal serum leptin levels and that of newborn's. Efforts should be made to attain adequate diet and weight gain during the pregnancy to reduce the likelihood of low or over birth weight of newborns.