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Infant Growth and Adult Obesity: Relationship and Factors Affecting Them

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Nutrition in Infancy

Part of the book series: Nutrition and Health ((NH))

Abstract

Obesity reflects the energy imbalance between calorie consumption and expenditure leading to abnormal body weight with direct negative consequences on human health. Obesity is considered today a pandemic since its prevalence has more than doubled since 1980 worldwide [1]. It increases the risk of chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, musculoskeletal disorders, and some cancers, and it is the fifth most important risk factor of death globally. The underlying causes contributing to the rising prevalence of obesity are complex and involve societal and environmental risk factors such as urbanisation and changing modes of work and transport as well as various individual risk factors. An early life component is increasingly being recognised in the aetiology of obesity [2, 3] being of major potential importance for public health strategies’ guidance. Patterns of growth associated with low birth weight and increased weight gain in childhood, as well as low birth weight per se, have shown inverse associations with obesity and related disorders such as insulin resistance, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease in adulthood [4–7]. In addition to birth weight and childhood growth trajectories, immediate postnatal growth has received considerable attention in the medical literature. This is the period of the fastest growth in the entire life span and is a critical window of tissue and organ development wherein several regulatory mechanisms continue to develop after birth [8]. Thus, variations in this process may have long-lasting effects on health. Several studies have examined weight changes between birth and the first years of life; results have suggested that weight gain is associated with childhood, adolescent, and adult obesity and with higher levels of cardiovascular and metabolic risk factors [9, 10]. There is also evidence that increased growth velocity in first years of life is associated with obesity and metabolic outcomes in adulthood [3, 11]. However, the majority of those studies use different definitions of postnatal growth and obesity, as well as of surrogate metabolic outcomes, which poses challenges in synthesising the available evidence in order to draw firm conclusions. Here we attempt to summarise the biological basis, which may explain the association between postnatal growth with later onset of obesity. We also aim to present the main evidence from observational studies, which examine associations between postnatal growth and obesity and focus on the main methodological limitations associated with this research area. We will focus our description on human studies; however, there is a large body of literature examining early life programming in animal models.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medical Statistics, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK

    Ulla Sovio

  2. Department of Hygiene and Epidemiology, University of Ioannina Medical School, Ioannina, 45110, Greece

    Evangelia E. Ntzani & Ioanna Tzoulaki M.Sc., Ph.D.

  3. Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Imperial College London, London, UK

    Ioanna Tzoulaki M.Sc., Ph.D.

Authors
  1. Ulla Sovio
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  2. Evangelia E. Ntzani
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  3. Ioanna Tzoulaki M.Sc., Ph.D.
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ioanna Tzoulaki M.Sc., Ph.D. .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Arizona Health Science Center, Mel and Enid Zuckerman, University of Arizona, 1295 N. Martin, Tucson, 85724-5155, Arizona, USA

    Ronald Ross Watson

  2. Centre for Gastroenterology, and Nutrition, University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom

    George Grimble

  3. School of Medicine, Diabetes & Nutritional, King's College London, 150 Stamford St., London, SE1 9NH, United Kingdom

    Victor R. Preedy

  4. Division of Health Promotion Sciences, Mel and Enid Zuckerman, University of Arizona, 1295 N. Martin Avenue, Tucson, 85724, Arizona, USA

    Sherma Zibadi

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Sovio, U., Ntzani, E.E., Tzoulaki, I. (2013). Infant Growth and Adult Obesity: Relationship and Factors Affecting Them. In: Watson, R., Grimble, G., Preedy, V., Zibadi, S. (eds) Nutrition in Infancy. Nutrition and Health. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-62703-254-4_28

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-62703-254-4_28

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  • Publisher Name: Humana Press, Totowa, NJ

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-62703-253-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-62703-254-4

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