The Impact of Mediterranean Dietary Patterns During Pregnancy on Maternal and Offspring Health
Open accessAbstract
(1) Background: Pregnancy outcomes for both mother and child are affected by many environmental factors. The importance of pregnancy for 'early life programming' is well established and maternal nutrition is an important factor contributing to a favourable environment for developing offspring. We aim to assess whether following a Mediterranean Diet during pregnancy is beneficial for maternal and offspring outcomes; (2) Methods: a systematic review was performed using standardized reporting guidelines with the National Heart Lung and Blood Iinstitute quality assessment tool for selection and extraction; (3) Results: results show that being on a Mediterranean Diet during pregnancy is associated with favourable outcomes for both maternal and offspring health, particularly for gestational diabetes in mothers and congenital defects in offspring (4) Conclusions: Following a Mediterranean dietary pattern during gestation is beneficial for the health of both the mother and offspring. Pregnant women and those trying to conceive should be advised to follow a Mediterranean Diet to potentially decrease, for example, the likelihood of atopy (OR 0.55) in the offspring and Gestational Diabetes Mellitus in the mother (OR 0.73).
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Previous systematic reviews had methodological differences, including narrow publication range criteria, choice of inclusion criteria, time of evaluation of dietary exposures, and choice of study outcomes.
“Moreover, previous systematic reviews had some methodological differences, including (1) narrow publication range criteria (for instance, 2000–2010) [38], (2) choice of inclusion criteria, including type of population of pregnant women (for example, women who delivered preterm infants or were hypertensive) [87], time of evaluation of the dietary exposures (dietary patterns before or during”
From Impact of Mediterranean Diet Adherence During Pregnancy on Preeclampsia, Gestational Diabetes Mellitus, and Excessive Gestational Weight Gain: A Systematic Review of Observational Studies and Randomized Controlled Trials (2025) · cites this paper as [88]
Section 2.3 (page unavailable) specifies this review’s inclusion criteria, including pregnant women at any gestational age, and Section 2.1 says its search had no date restriction. These passages show methodological choices, but the paper does not identify a 2000–2010 publication window or restrict its population to women who delivered preterm infants or were hypertensive. Its Introduction distinguishes its Mediterranean-diet focus from earlier reviews of multiple dietary patterns, rather than documenting the full list of differences claimed. (LLM, conf=0.78)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredNewborns whose mothers followed the Mediterranean diet during pregnancy showed a lower probability of developing neural tube defects.
“In addition, newborns whose mothers followed MD during pregnancy showed a lower probability of developing neural tube defects.”
From Mediterranean Diet as an Antioxidant: The Impact on Metabolic Health and Overall Wellbeing (2021) · cites this paper as [97]
Maternal nutrition before and during pregnancy has a major impact on fetal health and greatly contributes to the gut microbiota diversity of the offspring.
“As described in the review by Amati et al., maternal nutrition before and during pregnancy has a major impact on fetal health greatly contributing to the gut microbiota diversity of the offspring [97,100].”
From Mediterranean Diet as an Antioxidant: The Impact on Metabolic Health and Overall Wellbeing (2021) · cites this paper as [97]
Healthy diet before pregnancy, and mainly during pregnancy and lactation, has a major impact on the metabolic and overall health of the offspring.
“Healthy diet already before pregnancy, but mainly during pregnancy and lactation, has a major impact on the metabolic and overall health of the offspring [97,98,99].”
From Mediterranean Diet as an Antioxidant: The Impact on Metabolic Health and Overall Wellbeing (2021) · cites this paper as [97]
Children whose mothers had a high adherence to the Mediterranean diet are less likely to develop atopic diseases and behavioral problems.
“It has been shown that children whose mothers had a high adherence to the MD are less likely to develop atopic diseases and behavioral problems [97].”
From Mediterranean Diet as an Antioxidant: The Impact on Metabolic Health and Overall Wellbeing (2021) · cites this paper as [97]
Children whose mothers followed the Mediterranean diet had a lower risk of developing congenital heart defects.
“It was observed that children whose mothers followed MD had a lower risk of developing congenital heart defects.”
From Mediterranean Diet as an Antioxidant: The Impact on Metabolic Health and Overall Wellbeing (2021) · cites this paper as [97]
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- Authors
- Amati, F., Hassounah, S., & Swaka, A.
- Affiliations
- Imperial College London (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Amati, Federica
- Venue
- Nutrients
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Published
- 2019-05-17
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 1098
- ISSN
- 2072-6643 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC6566342
- OpenAlex
- W2946630911
- Cited by
- 135
- References
- 47
- Citations by year
- 2026: 13 · 2025: 16 · 2024: 18 · 2023: 28 · 2022: 23 · 2021: 22 · 2020: 12 · 2019: 3
- FWCI
- 2.45
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- dx.doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Nutrients (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Spiral (Imperial College London) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- National Institute for Health and Care Research
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Nutritional Studies and Diet
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health › Birth, Development, and Health
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Obstetrics and Gynecology › Gestational Diabetes Research and Management
- Keywords
- Mediterranean diet, pregnancy, maternal nutrition, gestational diabetes mellitus, congenital malformations, offspring health, early life programming, atopy, maternal outcomes
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Female, Humans, Infant, Pregnancy, Pregnancy Complications, Pregnancy Outcome, Diet, Mediterranean, Maternal Nutritional Physiological Phenomena
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