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Received Dec 15, 2017; Revised Feb 23, 2018; Accepted Mar 18, 2018
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
1. Introduction
Anthropometric measurements, including body weight, head circumference, and height of newborn infants, are widely assessed as determinants of impaired fetal growth, intrauterine environment, and maternal nutrition [1]. Restricted fetal growth is one of the most important global public health problems which provides a foundation for developing chronic diseases throughout their life [2]. Low birth weight infants are susceptible to higher risk of developing iron deficiency anemia leading to impaired development and altered longer term neurodevelopment [3]. Also, impaired fetal growth, in particular in head circumference, is associated with nonoptimal neurodevelopmental outcome [4]. There are also several evidences regarding the association between the impaired growth indices at birth and increased risk of developing some chronic disorders such as obesity, diabetes [5], cardiovascular diseases [5], endothelial dysfunction [6], nonalcoholic fatty liver disease [7], and chronic kidney disease [8].
In addition to genetic factors [9], placenta structural [10] and environmental factors affect fetal growth in utero [9], and maternal nutritional status could impact on fetal growth and development [11]. There is increasing evidence that nutrients [12] and some foods [13, 14] play an important role in the fetal growth. Earlier studies have also shown that high-quality diet in the first trimester of pregnancy is positively associated with birth size including birth weight and birth length [15].
However, due to a wide range of nutrient interactions, maternal dietary patterns should be explored to achieve the association between maternal nutrition and fetal growth. It is noteworthy that there are few studies assessing the birth anthropometric measurements along the maternal dietary patterns [16].
Dietary patterns are different based on cultural, geographical, and regional influence in each area and can have effects on health outcomes [17, 18]. Limited data are available regarding the association of maternal dietary patterns and neonatal anthropometric measurements in Middle Eastern countries, where mentioned factors are different from western population [19].
So, the purpose of the current study was to investigate the association between major maternal dietary patterns during the first-trimester period and neonatal...