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Girls were more likely to have obesity if their mother had obesity too, according to a prospective cohort study.

Looking at 240 mother-father-offspring trios from the Southampton Women's Survey, maternal body mass index (BMI) was positively linked with daughter's BMI at ages 6 to 7 years (β=0.29, 95% CI 0.11-0.48) and ages 8 to 9 years (β=0.33, 95% CI 0.13-0.54), reported Rebecca Moon, BM, BSc, PhD, of the University of Southampton in England, and colleagues.

While this trend was also seen at age 4, it didn't reach statistical significance (β=0.14, 95% CI -0.07 to 0.35), the group wrote in the .

In addition, fat mass in girls at ages 8 to 9 was also associated with maternal fat mass (β=0.31, 95% CI 0.12-0.49). Moon's group said this mother-daughter relationship with fat mass appeared to be established by the age of 4.

"The correlations between mother and daughter fat mass and percentage fat mass changed little between offspring ages of 4 years and 8 years, suggesting that these relationships are established early and before the typical period of the adiposity rebound, which usually occurs between 5 and 7 years," they explained.

Of note, at no age was daughters' BMI or fat mass significantly linked with paternal BMI or fat mass. Furthermore, at no age was boys' BMI or fat mass linked with either maternal or paternal BMI or fat mass.

"These findings highlight that girls born to mothers who have obesity or have high amounts of body fat may be at higher risk of gaining excess body fat themselves," Moon said in a statement. "Further studies are needed to understand why this is happening, but our findings suggest that approaches to addressing body weight and composition should start very early in life, particularly in girls born to mothers with obesity and overweight."

Lean mass was the only body composition parameter for which there were associations between fathers and daughters, but this was only seen at ages 6 to 7 (β =0.14, 95% CI 0.01-0.26). At no age did boys see this association with either parent.

"There are a number of factors that might determine parent-offspring correlations in body composition, including shared genetics and environmental influences, such as diet and physical activity," Moon and colleagues noted, adding that "the stronger mother-offspring relative to father-offspring associations with BMI and adiposity also support a possible role for the intrauterine environment in moderating adipose development."

The authors pointed out they did not take into consideration which parent was the primary caregiver or which parent planned out meals for the children.

For this study, Moon and team included 240 mother-father-offspring trios from the Southampton Women's Survey, a prospective U.K. population-based pre-birth cohort. Body composition was measured via dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry scans and children were measured at three ages: 4, 6 to 7, and 8 to 9.

At baseline, the mean age of mothers and fathers was 40.8 and 43.6, and median BMI was 25.3 and 27.3, respectively. Over 90% were white, and Moon's group noted that their findings may not be generalizable to other races/ethnicities.

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