Researchers at the U.S.Department of Agriculture-Arkansas Children's Nutrition Center found fetal exposure to gestational obesity leads to a self-reinforcing vicious cycle of excessive weight gain and body fat which passes from mother to child.

The findings appear in the online edition of the American Journal of Physiology -- Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology.

In lab tests, rats born to obese mothers gained remarkably more weight than other rats when fed a high-fat diet. Obese offspring fed a high-fat diet had a 26 percent greater percent fat ratio and a 60 percent increase in subcutaneous fat mass.

While high fat feeding significantly increased serum glucose, triglyceride, insulin and leptin levels in both groups, serum insulin and leptin levels increased by 2.2 and 2.3 fold in obese offspring compared to lean offspring fed the same diet.