The higher the woman's blood sugar, the greater the risk of her child being obese.
The researchers suspect that epigenetic changes are likely to be influencing these long-term outcomes and those changes begin quite early in pregnancy.
"The mother's blood sugar level during pregnancy is an independent contributor to the child's weight and risk of being obese later in childhood," said Boyd Metzger, professor at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
In addition, mothers with higher-than-normal blood sugar during pregnancy -- even if not at the level of gestational diabetes -- also were significantly more likely to have developed Type-2 diabetes a decade after pregnancy than their counterparts without high blood sugar, the researchers said, in the paper published in the journal JAMA.
Lowering a mother's blood sugar during her pregnancy reduces the birth weight of the child, as well as the risk of pre-eclampsia -- potentially life-threatening condition in which the mother has high blood pressure that affects her and the baby.
If not regulated on time, these can potentially increase the number of women and children at risk of acquiring lifelong chronic medical conditions.
"The results are important because they demonstrate that even women with mild hyperglycemia during pregnancy and their offspring are at risk of harmful maternal and child health outcomes," said coauthor Wendy Brickman, associate professor at Feinberg.
"Research is needed to identify interventions that will improve the health outcomes of these women and children," Brickman said
The study evaluated children 10 to 14 years after birth in 10 clinical centers in seven countries: the US, Canada, Israel, the UK, Hong Kong, Thailand and Barbados.
The study included 4,697 mothers and 4,832 children.
According to the Union Health Ministry, the cooperation between India and Norway will continue to be aligned with the development goals of India as outlined in its National Health Policy 2017 for achievement of Sustainable Development Goals.
The letter of intent was inked by Union Health Secretary C.K. Mishra and Norwegian Ambassador Nils Ragnar Kamsvag. The initiative will be through the Norway India Partnership Initiative (NIPI) for a period of three years starting from 2018.
"The cooperation will continue to focus on innovative, catalytic and strategic support, taking the Indian Government's Intensification Plan for Accelerated Maternal and Child Survival in India as the starting point," said the ministry in a statement.
The Indian and Norwegian Governments had agreed in 2006 to collaborate towards achieving Millenium Development Goals 4 to reduce child mortality based on commitments made by the two Prime Ministers.
The partnership was based on India's health initiative, the National Health Mission (NHM), and aimed at facilitating rapid scale-up of quality child and maternal health services in four high focus states - Bihar, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
The main activities in Phase I (2006-2012) were home-based new born care, Yashoda through State health system, establishing Sick Newborn Care Units, techno managerial support, and providing strategic support for immunization and Public Private Partnership initiatives.
The study showed that higher levels of choline prevented brain problems and mental illness, like attention deficit disorder and schizophrenia, in babies even when the mother had cold or flu during pregnancy.
"Cold and flu are often unavoidable, even if the mother has had a flu shot. But cold and flu during pregnancy double the risk of future mental illnesses. More and more information show choline helps the baby's brain develop properly," said Robert Freedman, Professor at the University of Colorado in the US.
"We found higher levels of choline prevent foetal brain problems from developing, even when the mother is infected. Choline supplements in pregnancy can have a lifelong benefit for the infant," Freedman said.
For the study, published in the Journal of Paediatrics, the team assessed prenatal maternal infection, C-Reactive Protein (CRP) -- a marker of maternal inflammation -- and the mothers' choline levels.
Brain development before birth was assessed by measuring the baby's brain waves soon after birth.
When mothers had a cold or flu during the first 16 weeks of pregnancy, the newborns'
ability to cease or delay the effect on the brain decreased by 27 per cent.
Maternal flu also decreased children's ability to pay attention and play.
However, these effects were prevented if the mother had higher choline levels, the findings showed.
While the body creates some choline on its own and it is also naturally present in certain foods, including liver, red meat and eggs, pregnant women are recommended 450 mg of choline a day to improve babies' brain development.
The study was published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ).
According to the researchers, underlying inequities in these rural settings mean that more work is needed to reach the poorest families, who bear the greatest burden of maternal and newborn mortality.
"Our findings have both an optimistic and a pessimistic interpretation, in that families from all socio-economic status groups benefited, but inequities have also persisted," said Indian-origin researcher Tanya Marchant from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the UK.
To assess the impact of community-based health interventions linked to the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, an international team of researchers looked at eight essential maternal and newborn health indicators in rural India, Ethiopia and Nigeria, representing more than 22 million people.
Indicators included antenatal and postnatal care, births in health care facilities, hygienic umbilical cord care, breastfeeding initiation and more.
The researchers found some improvements. For example, more women in Ethiopia and Uttar Pradesh, India, had access to maternity care in 2015 than in 2012.
In Gombe, Nigeria, socioeconomic issues as well as the Boko Haram terror threat prevented most women from receiving adequate care, although some positive family behaviour, such as hygienic cord care, showed marked improvement.
Despite this progress, it was striking that in all three settings the number of newborns receiving early postnatal care did not improve.
"Improving outcomes for mothers and newborns requires not only structural changes in the provision of care, but also behaviour changes by individuals, communities and health care providers," study authors said.