Overweight in epilepsy as a risk factor for pregnancy and delivery complications

Summary Objective To investigate whether prepregnancy overweight in women with epilepsy increases their risk for complications during pregnancy and delivery. Methods This study is based on The Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study (MoBa) linked to the Medical Birth Registry of Norway. A diagnosis of epilepsy was reported in 706 pregnancies. Overweight was defined as body mass index ≥ 25 prepregnancy. Overweight women with epilepsy (n = 259) were compared to normal‐weight women with epilepsy (n = 416), and to women without epilepsy with and without overweight (n = 30,516 and n = 67,977, respectively). The risks of pregnancy and delivery complications were calculated as odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) adjusted for adverse socioeconomic factors, age, parity, and smoking. Results Women with epilepsy were more often overweight than women without epilepsy (38.4% vs. 31.3%, p