Neonatal health care can reduce adult heart, stroke and diabetes incidence: Health begins at conception and continues to adulthood

The health of the pregnant mother is critical to the health of the baby. Doctors have known that for a long time. More recent research shows that the mother’s health can affect that baby long after development, into childhood and in some cases as a mature adult. Finding the answers to what, how and why there is such an impact is important.

Dr. Kaiping Yang , Chair of the Fetal and Newborn Health Program at CHRI, and his team of scientists are working hard to discover those answers. Their group is part of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Group in Fetal and Neonatal Health and Development. The group is recognized worldwide as one of the strongest prenatal research groups internationally.

Dr. Yang is focused on studying the role of a chemical produced by the placenta in regulating fetal growth, and how reduced production of this chemical contributes to fetal growth restriction, which results in low birth weight babies. Dr. Yang compliments this research by also investigating why and how low birth weight babies are a greater risk of developing central obesity in childhood and adulthood.

"Increasing evidence suggests that low birth weight is linked to adverse health outcomes both in childhood and adulthood. These include a greater chance of developing various medical complications during the newborn period", says Dr. Yang.

Dr. Yang’s research will lead to a better understanding of the factors that are responsible for causing low birth weight with the hope of developing new intervention strategies to prevent low birth weight and its associated adverse health outcomes.

"When low birth weight babies become children, they are more likely to develop problems with behavior and learning. As adults, they are also more likely to develop obesity, hypertension, heart attack, stroke, diabetes, sleeping disorders, and even cancers. All of these short- and long-term problems have significant impact on the health and quality of life of the child as well as the wellbeing of their families." However, little is known about the factors that are responsible for low birth weight, and how this condition leads to diseases later in life.

By focusing on the study of low birth weight babies Dr. Yang hopes that they can improve on the quality of life of low birth weight newborns as they grow into children and adults.