Small Baby Boys Face Blood Pressure Risk As Teens
Study Links Birth Size, Blood Pressure
POSTED: 4:11 p.m. EST February 10, 2003
Lean baby boys who pack on the pounds between ages 8 and 15 have an increased risk of high blood pressure in their teens, according to a new study.
However, boys with more rapid growth in the first two years of life, as opposed to later in childhood, were not at increased risk of having high blood pressure in adolescence, regardless of whether they were thin at birth, researchers report in Monday's rapid access issue of Hypertension: Journal of the American Heart Association.
"The boys who were thinnest at birth and who gained the most weight during childhood and adolescence were the ones who had the greatest risk of high blood pressure," said lead researcher Linda Adair, professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Schools of Medicine and Public Health.
But Adair said growth during infancy may be slightly protective against high blood pressure later.
"This is an important finding because pediatricians want to see improved growth in babies born small," she said.
Adair and biostatistician Tim J. Cole, of the Institute of Child Health in London, studied data from the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey, in which Adair has been involved since 1986. It continues to follow more than 2,000 people born between 1983 and '84 in and near Cebu, the Philippines' second largest city.
Is the correlation limited to boys? Intriguingly, yes, according to the researchers, who did not find any relationship between body proportions at birth and the risk of elevated blood pressure in adolescence among the girls in the study.
"The sex difference is a big question that we cannot answer," Adair said. "We thought the reason might be related to sexual maturity, but when we controlled for it in our analysis, it didn't make a difference."
For girls, large weight gains during ages 8 to 15 increased their risk of elevated blood pressure, but the risk was unrelated to birth weight.
The new findings are consistent with the fetal programming or Barker hypothesis, named after its main advocate, Dr. David Barker, of the University of Southampton in England.
The hypothesis holds that a malnourished fetus will adapt its metabolism to survive in the womb until birth, but that these changes put a person at increased risk of several chronic diseases -- including cardiovascular ailments, diabetes and perhaps cancer -- later in life.
The study results demonstrate the need for pregnant women to receive adequate nutrition and health care to avoid slow fetal growth, Adair said.
However, boys with more rapid growth in the first two years of life, as opposed to later in childhood, were not at increased risk of having high blood pressure in adolescence, regardless of whether they were thin at birth, researchers report in Monday's rapid access issue of Hypertension: Journal of the American Heart Association.
"The boys who were thinnest at birth and who gained the most weight during childhood and adolescence were the ones who had the greatest risk of high blood pressure," said lead researcher Linda Adair, professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Schools of Medicine and Public Health.
But Adair said growth during infancy may be slightly protective against high blood pressure later.
"This is an important finding because pediatricians want to see improved growth in babies born small," she said.
Adair and biostatistician Tim J. Cole, of the Institute of Child Health in London, studied data from the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey, in which Adair has been involved since 1986. It continues to follow more than 2,000 people born between 1983 and '84 in and near Cebu, the Philippines' second largest city.
Is the correlation limited to boys? Intriguingly, yes, according to the researchers, who did not find any relationship between body proportions at birth and the risk of elevated blood pressure in adolescence among the girls in the study.
"The sex difference is a big question that we cannot answer," Adair said. "We thought the reason might be related to sexual maturity, but when we controlled for it in our analysis, it didn't make a difference."
For girls, large weight gains during ages 8 to 15 increased their risk of elevated blood pressure, but the risk was unrelated to birth weight.
The new findings are consistent with the fetal programming or Barker hypothesis, named after its main advocate, Dr. David Barker, of the University of Southampton in England.
The hypothesis holds that a malnourished fetus will adapt its metabolism to survive in the womb until birth, but that these changes put a person at increased risk of several chronic diseases -- including cardiovascular ailments, diabetes and perhaps cancer -- later in life.
The study results demonstrate the need for pregnant women to receive adequate nutrition and health care to avoid slow fetal growth, Adair said.
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