Reuters reported that a large Swedish study found that obese pregnant women were more likely to have children with asthma than normal-weight pregnant women. The study, published in the Journal of Metabolic and Clinical Immunology, looked at more than 129,000 mothers and 189,000 of their children in Stockholm. The study found that mothers who were too obese during pregnancy or had a body mass index (BMI) of more than 35 (including 35) had a 61 percent risk of having children with asthma before the age of 8 to 10. According to Adrian Lowe, a researcher at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and the University of Melbourne, “We found that the fatter the mother was in early pregnancy, the higher the chance that the child would develop childhood asthma and require medication and hospitalization.” Lowe told Reuters by phone, “Compared to mothers of normal weight, children born to overweight mothers are 41 percent more likely to have these problems, and slightly overweight mothers are 18 percent more likely.” Maternal obesity increases the risk of obesity in the child, and also affects the baby’s immune system and may trigger allergies. He said, “The results of the study suggest that losing weight before pregnancy may be beneficial in preventing childhood asthma.”