Background-Obesity and asthma prevalence have both risen among children over the last several decades, and research efforts increasingly suggest that obesity is associated with asthma. Some, but not all, studies have shown that the effect of obesity on asthma is stronger among non-atopic individuals than among those with atopy. Systemic inflammation may be a factor in this relationship.

The increasing prevalence of overweight and obesity among women of childbearing age is a growing public health concern in the United States. The average body mass index (BMI) is increasing among all age categories and women enter pregnancy at higher weights. Women are also more likely to retain gestational weight with each pregnancy. Women who are overweight (BMI 25-30) and obese (BMI ≥ 30) are at greater risk of adverse reproductive health outcomes compared to women of normal weight status . This article provides an overview of the complications associated with maternal overweight and obesity including diabetes, pre-eclampsia, c-sections, and birth defects. We present updated information on the weight trends among women. Finally, we present an overview of the prevention studies aimed at adolescents and women prior to pregnancy.

Summary Objective To estimate the proportion of pregnant women with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) meeting Institute of Medicine (IOM) guidelines for gestational weight gain (GWG) and determine correlates of adherence to guidelines. Methods Singleton, live births in the Hopkins Lupus Pregnancy Cohort 1987-2015 were included. Pre-pregnancy weight was the weight recorded 12 months prior to pregnancy/first trimester. Final weight was the last weight recorded in the third trimester. Adherence to IOM guidelines (inadequate, adequate, or excessive) was based on pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI). Fisher's exact test and ANOVA determined factors associated with not meeting guidelines. Stepwise selection estimated predictors of GWG. Results Of the 211 pregnancies, 34%, 24% and 42% had inadequate, adequate, and excessive GWG, respectively. In exploratory analyses, differences in IOM adherence were observed by pre-pregnancy BMI, race, elevated creatinine during pregnancy, and pre-pregnancy blood pressure. Odds of inadequate and excessive GWG increased 12% with each 1 kg/m2 increase in pre-pregnancy BMI. Lower maternal education was associated with increased odds of inadequate and excessive GWG. Conclusions As in the general population, most women with SLE did not meet IOM guidelines. Our results identified predictors of GWG to aid in targeted interventions to improve guideline adherence in this population.

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Dietary patterns (DPs) synthesize multiple related dietary components in one or more combined variables. A drawback of DPs is their limited reproducibility across subpopulations, especially adopting a posteriori DPs, derived using standard multivariate methods [e.g., factor analysis (FA)]. Standard approaches assessing reproducibility of FA-based DPs mostly rely on correlation coefficients/agreement measures between pairs of factors and do not consider any statistical model. Multi-study factor analysis builds upon standard FA model to identify DPs shared across all subpopulations and those specific to some subpopulations. Pattern reproducibility is investigated from a different perspective: a shared DP identified within multi-study factor analysis is “reproducible” since it is common to all subpopulations. Bayesian multi-study factor analysis (BMSFA) has been developed to improve DP retention and identification, two critical issues as the number of subpopulations analyzed increases.Using baseline (2008-2011) 24-hour dietary recalls from the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos (n=16,415), we applied the BMSFA on 42 common nutrients to identify shared and subpopulation-specific DPs where subpopulations were defined as the cross-classification of ethnic background and study site (EBS).Overall, 4 shared DPs were identified: Plant-based foods, Processed foods, Dairy products, and Seafood. At the subpopulation level, we identified 12 EBS-specific DPs, one for each EBS category, primarily representing variants of foods from animal sources. Different nuances were expressed by subsets of fairly similar EBS-specific DPs, including an Animal vs. vegetable source, an Animal source only, and a Poultry vs. dairy products overarching DPs. Shared DPs from BMSFA were similar to their counterparts from standard FA and frequentist multi-study factor analysis; EBS-specific DPs from BMSFA were better characterized than those from frequentist multi-study factor analysis.In conclusion, the BMSFA successfully captured sources of both dietary homogeneity and heterogeneity in a large well-characterized study of US Hispanics/Latino adults by ethnic background and site.