Obesity In Moms Ups Autism Odds

Disability Scoop (April 4, 2012)-The number of children born with autism is on the rise and so is obesity. Now researchers say the two may be linked.

In a study of more than 1,000 children, researchers found that mothers who were obese during pregnancy had a 67 percent greater chance of having a child with autism and were more than twice as likely to have a child with another developmental disorder. What’s more, moms with diabetes — which often occurs in those who are overweight — were 2.3 times more likely to have a child with developmental delay.

The findings published Monday in the journal Pediatrics are among the first to tie autism and developmental delay to the presence of metabolic conditions like obesity and diabetes in pregnant women. Researchers say their discoveries carry significant public health concerns, citing statistics showing that nearly 60 percent of American women of child-bearing age are overweight.

“It really was eye opening,” said Paula Krakowiak of the University of California at Davis who led the study. “This would add to reasons to do whatever you can to maintain your health.”

For the study, Krakowiak and her colleagues looked at over 500 children with autism, nearly 200 with other developmental delays and about 300 typically developing kids in California.

Through interviews with the children’s mothers and reviews of medical records, they found that obesity, diabetes and hypertension during pregnancy were significantly more common among mothers who gave birth to kids with developmental problems.

It’s unclear why metabolic issues like obesity would increase the odds of autism and other developmental problems, but Krakowiak said that the body’s reaction to such conditions could negatively affect a baby’s brain development.

“There are already benefits of modifying lifestyle — eating healthy and being active — but not only is it going to increase your own well-being, but it also might reduce the odds of adverse effects in your child,” Krakowiak said.

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Good Night's Sleep May Reduce Risk of Type 2 Diabetes in Obese Teens

ScienceDaily (Sep. 22, 2011) — Obese teenagers who don't get the proper amount of sleep may have disruptions in insulin secretion and blood sugar (glucose) levels, say pediatric researchers. Their study suggests that getting a good night's sleep may stave off the development of type 2 diabetes in these adolescents.

"We already know that three out of four high school students report getting insufficient sleep," said study investigator Dorit Koren, M.D., a pediatric endocrinologist at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "Our study found to keep glucose levels stable, the optimal amount of sleep for teenagers is 7.5 to 8.5 hours per night." She added that this is consistent with research in adults showing an association between sleep deprivation and increased risk of type 2 diabetes.

The study appears online in the journal Diabetes Care.

The researchers studied 62 obese adolescents with a mean age of 14 years at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Over one and a half days, the children, who were white, African American and Hispanic teenagers, underwent glucose testing and an overnight sleep study. In addition to measuring total sleep time, the scientists studied "sleep architecture," analyzing stages of sleep such as slow-wave "deep" sleep and rapid eye movement (dream) sleep.

The optimal sleep duration was neither too little nor too much, said Koren; both insufficient and excessive sleep were linked to higher glucose levels. While sleep stages did not predict glucose levels, lower duration of N3 ("deep" sleep) correlated with decreased insulin secretion.

The current study was the first to associate sleep duration with glucose levels in children and to report a link between N3 sleep and insulin secretion.

"Reduced insulin secretion may lead to the higher glucose levels that we found in subjects who had insufficient sleep," said Koren. "We will seek to confirm these findings with home-based studies of sleep patterns in obese teenagers. In the meantime, our study reinforces the idea that getting adequate sleep in adolescence may help protect against type 2 diabetes."

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A Protein May Help Treat Obesity, Diabetes

ScienceDaily (Aug. 10, 2011) — A newly-identified protein may hold the key to keeping appetite and blood sugar in check, according to a study by York University researchers.

Suraj Unniappan, associate professor in York's Department of Biology, Faculty of Science & Engineering, is delving into the metabolic effects of a protein called nesfatin-1, abundantly present in the brain. His studies found that rats administered with nesfatin-1 ate less, used more stored fat and became more active. In addition, the protein stimulated insulin secretion from the pancreatic beta cells of both rats and mice.

"[The rats] actually ate more frequently but in lesser amounts," says Unniappan, a member of York's neuroscience graduate diploma program, and a recipient of a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) New Investigator Award. "In addition, they were more active and we found that their fatty acid oxidization was increased. In other words, the energy reserve being preferably used during nesfatin-1 treatment was fat. This suggests more fat loss, which could eventually result in body weight loss," he says.

The findings were reported in two recent research articles from Unniappan's laboratory: one published August 9 in Endocrinology and another in March 2011 in Journal of Endocrinology.

Discovered by a research team from Japan in 2006, nesfatin-1 was earlier found to regulate appetite and the production of body fat when injected into the brain of mice and rats.

Unniappan's findings indicate that the protein stimulates insulin secretion from the pancreas, a glandular organ, which contains clusters of cells called the islets of Langerhans. These islets produce several important hormones, including the primary glucose-lowering hormone, insulin.

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