CHILDREN whose mothers are overweight are more likely to be fat themselves at the age of nine, according to a Southampton University study.

Research carried out by the university's Epidemiology Resource Centre found such children are more likely to have a higher amount of body fat.

During the study Dr Catharine Gale and Professor Cyrus Cooper scanned 216 nine-year-old children whose mothers had participated in a study of nutrition during pregnancy.

They looked at the relationship between maternal size in pregnancy, early growth and body composition at the age of nine-years-old.

Dr Gale said: "A previous study showed that babies are born with a higher amount of body fat if their mothers were significantly overweight during pregnancy, and we wanted to see whether that relationship persists into childhood.

She added: "'We found that mothers with a higher pre-pregnant BMI, or a larger mid-upper arm circumference in late pregnancy, tended to have children with greater 'adiposity' or 'fatness', at the age of nine.

"Although the extent to which this is attributable to genetic factors, the influence of the mother's lifestyle on that of her child, or to physical changes to the child's fat mass brought on by their mother's 'adiposity' during pregnancy, is not yet known.

"We also noticed that children were likely to have greater fat mass if their mothers had smoked in pregnancy, if they had gained a lot of weight in infancy (especially boys), or had not been breastfed (especially girls)."