Giving birth to a child is the most important moment of a woman’s life and choosing the right method for the safety of the mother and child both are necessary cesarean deliveries among the many delivery methods have their own effects on babies. Recently a study published in JAMA Network Open showed that women born via cesarean delivery were at a higher risk of developing these conditions during adult life than women born via vaginal delivery. This study revealed that women born via cesarean delivery were 11 percent more likely to become obese as adults and 46 percent more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than women born via vaginal delivery.
There were many studies before this that had linked cesarean deliveries to childhood obesity but this study is the first one to point to obesity in women in adulthood. This study included participants born between 1946 to 1964 and was also the first one to link Type 2 Diabetes with cesarean delivery. The researchers of the study confirmed that this link between cesarean delivery and obesity, and diabetes were independent of other factors such as age and Body Mass Index (BMI) of the participant mothers.
Even though this study was new and first of its type with the largest sample size and longest period of follow-up compared to the past studies, it still needs to be researched more. For such delivery on the basis of maternal characteristics, the association of C-section delivery with risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes was of comparable magnitude in each low-risk group, separately, and when taken together. Further studies will investigate the association with type 2 diabetes and examine the biological mechanisms that underlie the correlation between C-section and increased risk of adult diabetes and obesity.
