Association between caesarean section and childhood obesity: a systematic review and meta‐analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Birth by caesarean section has been recently implicated in the aetiology of childhood obesity, but studies examining the association have varied with regard to their settings, designs, and adjustment for potential confounders. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to summarize the available evidence and to explore study characteristics as sources of heterogeneity. A search of Medline, EMBASE, and Web of Science identified 28 studies. Random effects meta-analysis was used to calculate pooled risk ratios (RR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI). Caesarean section had a RR of 1.34 (CI 1.18-1.51) for obesity in the child compared with vaginal birth. The RR was lower for studies that adjusted for maternal pre-pregnancy weight than for studies that did not (1.29, CI 1.16-1.44 vs. 1.55, CI 1.11-2.17). Studies that examined multiple early life factors reported lower RRs than studies that specifically examined caesarean section (1.39, CI 1.23-1.57 vs. 1.23, CI 0.97-1.56). Effect estimates did not vary by child's age at obesity assessment, study design or country income. Children born by caesarean section are at higher risk of developing obesity in childhood. Findings are limited by a moderate heterogeneity among studies and the potential for residual confounding and publication bias.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.021 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.014 | 0.021 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.006 | 0.008 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".