Risk of childhood overweight or obesity associated with excessive weight gain during pregnancy: a meta-analysis.

Purpose: Several investigations have shown that the risk of childhood overweight and obesity may be associated with excessive gestational weight gain (GWG), but the study samples were limited and results were mixed; hence we conducted this meta-analysis to assess the explicit association between them and present evidence.

Methods: We searched PubMed, EMbase, Ovid, Web of knowledge and Cochrane library for relevant studies. Bibliographies from retrieved articles were also manually searched.