Jonathan Purnell
Oregon Health & Science University, OR·Public Health & Epidemiology
Obesity has risen steadily in the United States, including among pregnant women. Children born to mothers with obesity, especially severe obesity, face higher risks of obesity and chronic disease themselves.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
bariatric surgery
weight-loss surgery
maternal obesity
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Compare birth size for gestational age, infant weight gain and BMI through age six in children of 2,120 women who had bariatric surgery before pregnancy versus 21,200 children of women without surgery, matched on pre-surgery or pre-pregnancy BMI.
- Determine how much gestational diabetes, hypertensive disorders, anemia and gestational weight gain explain the associations between maternal bariatric surgery and child weight outcomes.
- Test whether being small for gestational age relates to child outcomes similarly in children born to mothers with and without bariatric surgery, and with and without anemia in pregnancy.
More about the research
Efforts to intervene during pregnancy have been disappointing, so attention has shifted to the time before conception. Bariatric (weight-loss) surgery produces large weight losses, averaging 20 to 30 percent of body weight, that last for years. It is increasingly common among women of childbearing age. Whether weight loss through surgery before pregnancy helps or harms children over the long term is poorly understood.
Why it matters
Women with severe obesity who are considering bariatric surgery before pregnancy, and the clinicians who advise them, currently have little evidence about long-term effects on children. This study could clarify the benefits and risks of preconception weight loss, both through surgery and in general. It could guide future efforts to improve mothers' weight before pregnancy by lifestyle, medical or surgical means and reduce obesity in the next generation.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Kaitlyn Stanhope
Emory University, GA·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Estimate the direct and indirect effects of lifetime trauma on cardiometabolic disorders of pregnancy, namely hypertensive disorders of pregnancy and gestational diabetes, using the Grady Trauma Project cohort and the EmPOWR pregnancy registry.
Zorimar Rivera-Nunez
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Public Health & Epidemiology
Measure prenatal exposure to zearalenone (ZEN), a fungal estrogen-like contaminant, and its metabolites in TIDES pregnant women, and relate it to estrogen production and metabolomic profiles during pregnancy.
James Hahn
George Washington University, DC·Biomedical Engineering
Develop machine learning algorithms that predict liver fat (hepatic steatosis), liver scarring (fibrosis), body fat and blood biomarkers from 3D optical body surface scans, trained and validated against liver biopsy data.
The school
Oregon Health & Science University: 24 labs on PI Pages, $545M a year on research, 54 research doctorates a year.
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