To Örebro University

Objective: to study the body mass index (BMI) in women seeking maternity health care during early pregnancy in Sweden, and to show trends for a period of more than 20 years.

Study design: register study.

Methods: data from the maternity health programme on consecutively delivered women in two Swedish hospitals were collected for the years 1978, 1986, 1992, 1997 and 2001. All women were weighed at their first midwife visit between 8 and 10 weeks of gestation and height was also measured.

Results: data on 4883 women were collected. Data on weight were available for 4490 (92%) women and data on BMI were available for 4378 (90%) women. The age-adjusted average weight increased from 59.5 kg in 1978 to 68.2 kg in 2001, and the BMI increased from 21.7 in 1978 to 24.7 in 2001. In 2001, 38.6% of the women had a BMI > 25 compared with 11.2 in 1978. In 2001, 11.6% of the women were obese compared with 2.2% in 1978.

Conclusions: during the last two decades, an alarming increase in weight has occurred in Swedish women of childbearing age.