WOMEN whose heaviness prevents them conceiving easily are likely to cause a blow-out in the cost of treating their fertility problems, a leading specialist says.
The head of reproductive medicine at the University of Adelaide, Rob Norman, says an increase in weight problems among young women is already taking its toll on their reproductive health. He said intensive weight-loss programs for diabetics, run through hospitals, did not appear to work for young women, who were often too busy to participate fully.
Professor Norman will outline the extent of weight-related fertility problems at the International Congress on Obesity, at Darling Harbour this week. "This epidemic will have very serious consequences for fertility," he said. "We need specific programs that address the weight problems of young women."
This would be cheaper for governments to provide than the huge cost of fertility treatment, he said, "including increased medical consultations, ovulation induction and [in vitro fertilisation]."
A recent study of women's health showed those in their 20s typically put on five kilograms over seven years, before most of them had had their first babies.
Professor Norman warned that even if overweight women became pregnant, they stored up further health problems for themselves and their children.
"We're realising more and more that if you do pass [a fertility patient] on to an obstetrician, you're just passing on the problem. When they're pregnant they have a higher risk of gestational diabetes and an increased risk of foetal death and birth complications."
Professor Norman said he was working with Peter Clifton and Manny Noakes, authors of the best-selling CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet, to develop a diet for young women with fertility problems, after his research showed that women with the condition polycystic ovarian syndrome may have trouble controlling their appetite. The condition, usually found in overweight women, stops regular ovulation. But even among slim women with the syndrome there were differences in levels of the appetite-regulating hormone ghrelin, Professor Norman said. Modest weight loss could restore regular menstruation and dramatically improve the chances of conceiving.
Today the congress will hear from a scientist who has found that baby mice can inherit fatness directly from their mothers.
A principal research fellow at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Emma Whitelaw, said that "there are some strains of mice where there is some memory of the level of obesity in the mother that can be passed on to the offspring". Up to 15 per cent of the baby mice seemed to inherit their mother's fatness, she said.
Professor Whitelaw said there was no evidence yet for any such epigenetic effect in humans, but it was unlikely the phenomenon would be limited to one mammalian species.
Obesity and Reproductive Health 
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