ONE hundred obese mothers-to-be in Liverpool will be given drugs to stop their new-born babies becoming overweight.

The patients at Liverpool Women’s Hospital were due to take part in a three-year study, as an attempt to lower obesity rates and reduce problematic births in the city.

More than 500 pregnant women come to the hospital every year with a body mass index (BMI) of more than 40, meaning they are severely obese.

Senior lecturer in obstetrics at the hospital, Dr Andrew Weeks, said larger women were far more likely to have larger babies, which often results in complications during labour.

The drug, called Metformin, is usually given to diabetics but the women involved will not have the condition.

They will take it up to three times a day during their pregnancy, and they and their babies will be monitored.

The treatment should reduce the food supply to the baby, and is not designed to help the mothers themselves lose weight.

Dr Weeks, who is leading the trial at the hospital, said: “It is about trying to improve outcomes in pregnancy for women who are overweight.

“The problem is babies tend to be larger.

“And many of the downsides of being overweight during pregnancy relate to the birth.

“Rates of Caesareans are much higher, as are births with forceps and other very serious complications.

“If we can reduce the weight of the baby slightly, it may well improve the birth.”

He explained why Metformin had been chosen for the trial: “Everybody has a tendency in pregnancy to be pushed closer to diabetes, but people who are overweight are pushed closer to it still.

“This tends to put up the babies’ birth weight, because the higher sugar levels are passed onto the baby.

“The aim of the drug is to keep these sugar levels down, and therefore the weight down.”

And he defended the plan to prescribe drugs to pregnant women for a problem that can be solved through better diet and exercise choices: “I don’t buy into the idea that if something is considered unnatural then it should not be done.