Women who are overweight or obese before becoming pregnant could be putting themselves or their babies at risk for certain health complications, reports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). One particularly serious potential problem: Infant heart defects, such as obstruction on the right side of the heart or defects in the tissue that separates the two upper chambers of the heart.

In a study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, CDC researchers found that overweight or obese women—as defined by body mass index (BMI)—had an approximately 18 percent increased risk of giving birth to babies with these or other heart defects. Severely obese women had an even greater increase in risk: About 30 percent when compared with women with normal BMI.

For more from the CDC on birth defects, visit

www.cdc.gov/ncbddd

.