Reuters reports that a large-scale Swedish study has found that children of obese pregnant women are more likely to develop asthma than those of normal-weight pregnant women. The study, published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, looked at more than 129,000 mothers and their 189,000 children in Stockholm. The study found that children of mothers who were obese during pregnancy or had a body mass index (BMI) of 35 or more had a 61 percent risk of developing asthma by the age of 8 to 10 years. 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 the early stages of pregnancy, the significantly higher the chances of the child developing childhood asthma, needing medication and hospitalization.” Lowe told Reuters by phone, “Children born to overweight mothers were 41 percent more likely to have these problems compared to normal weight mothers, and 18 percent more likely to be born to slightly overweight mothers.” Maternal obesity puts the child at increased risk of obesity, as well as affecting the baby’s immune system and potentially triggering allergies. He said, “The findings suggest that losing weight before pregnancy may be beneficial in preventing childhood asthma.”