Maternal Mediterranean Diet during Pregnancy and Adiposity from Early Childhood through Preadolescence.

There was no overall association between maternal Mediterranean-style diet during pregnancy and child adiposity between ages 2 and 12 years.

• Repeated measures linear regression models with autoregressive covariance were used to assess associations between maternal diet and child BMI trajectories
• Logistic regression models were used to assess associations between maternal diet and likelihood of child BMI greater than the 85th percentile
• The null finding held across the full study cohort without stratification by race/ethnicity

Among White children, low maternal adherence to a Mediterranean-style diet during pregnancy was associated with a higher BMI trajectory compared to high maternal adherence.

• The association was statistically significant (β = -0.67; p = 0.01)
• This finding emerged only in race/ethnic-specific analyses
• The negative beta coefficient indicates that higher adherence to Mediterranean diet was associated with lower child BMI trajectory
• This association was not observed across other racial/ethnic groups in the cohort

The study examined child adiposity longitudinally from ages 2 through 12 years using repeated measures methodology.

• Repeated measures linear regression models with autoregressive covariance structure were employed
• Child BMI trajectories were the primary outcome measure
• Adiposity rebound age was also assessed as an outcome using multiple linear regression
• The association between age at adiposity rebound and likelihood of subsequent overweight/obesity was also evaluated with logistic regression

The authors attributed the race/ethnic-specific associations between maternal diet and child BMI trajectories to cultural and socioeconomic factors.

• The authors noted that cultural and socioeconomic factors 'likely stem from' the observed race/ethnic differences
• These factors were identified as important considerations when designing interventions
• Race/ethnicity interactions were explicitly explored in the statistical analyses