Early‐life determinants of overweight and obesity: a review of systematic reviews

The aim of this paper was to review the evidence for early-life (from conception to 5 years of age) determinants of obesity. The design is review of published systematic reviews. Data sources included Medline, Embase, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, CINAHL, PsycINFO. Identification of 22 eligible reviews from a database of 12,021 independent publications. Quality of selected reviews assessed using the Assessment of Multiple Systematic Reviews score. Articles published after the reviews were used to confirm results. No review was classified as high quality, 11 as moderate and 11 as low. Factors associated with later overweight and obesity: maternal diabetes, maternal smoking, rapid infant growth, no or short…