Effect of Leptin on weight gain in pregnant women: A systematic review

Pregnancy is a condition associated with decreased thermogenesis leading to increased body fat mass. In early pregnancy، lypogenesis routes are dominant that seems it is by hormones such as Leptin، while at the end، lipolysis molecular routes are more active. The key role of Leptin in animals and humans is regulating body fat which its levels increases with increased gestational age، peaks in second trimester and stays platue untill term. This systematic review was performed with the aim to summarize the studies related to leptin and weight gain during pregnancy. in this study، 56 abstract and full text articles were obtained from electronic research by entering the desired keywords in Sciencedirect، Pubmed، Googlescholar،Yahoo، Iranmedex and SID databases since 1995 to 2013 that finally 22 full text articles including 4 Persian and 18 English were reviewed and evaluated. The literature review suggests a strong possible association between maternal serum leptin levels and maternal weight gain during pregnancy، and this relation was a significant correlation in most studies independent of body mass index. Although the results of this review article indicate a strong association between maternal serum leptin and their weight gain during pregnancy، but due to controversial studies in this field، further studies are needed for definite judgment.