Moms who are overweight or obese in early pregancy may increase the risk of heart attack in their children later in life, a study in Australia found. Researchers at the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne and the University of Sydney compared the thickness of the wall of the aorta, the largest artery in the body, in newborns with the body mass index of their mothers at 16 weeks’ gestation. They found a BMI of 25 or more, considered overweight, led to an 8 percent increase in aortic thickness in the baby.
