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Maternal and cord blood hormones in relation to birth size

  • PERINATAL EPIDEMIOLOGY
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Abstract

Birth size has been associated with adult life diseases, but the endocrine factors that are likely involved are not established. We evaluated the associations of maternal and cord blood hormones with birth size in normal pregnancies, and examined possible effect modification by maternal height, on the basis of prior suggestive evidence. In a prospective study of normal singleton pregnancies in Boston, USA and Shanghai, China, maternal hormone levels at the 27th gestational week were available for 225 pregnancies in Boston and 281 in Shanghai and cord blood measurements for 92 pregnancies in Boston and 110 in Shanghai. Pearson partial correlation coefficients of log-transformed hormone levels with birth weight and length were calculated. Overall, positive correlations with birth weight were found for maternal estriol (r = 0.19; p < 0.001) and progesterone (r = 0.15; p < 0.001) and these associations were more evident among taller mothers. There was an inverse association of cord blood progesterone (r = −0.16; p < 0.03) with birth weight. In Boston, cord blood IGF-1 was positively associated with birth weight (r = 0.22; p < 0.04) and length (r = 0.25; p < 0.02), particularly among taller mothers (r = 0.43 and 0.38, respectively; p < 0.02), whereas among taller mothers in Shanghai the associations of IGF-2 with birth size appeared to be at least as strong as those of IGF-1. In conclusion, maternal estriol and progesterone, and cord blood IGF-1 were positively correlated with birth size. All correlations tended to be more pronounced among offspring of taller mothers. Among taller mothers in Shanghai, IGF-2 appeared to be at least as strongly associated with birth size as IGF-1.

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Acknowledgments

This study was partially supported by grant CA54220 from the National Cancer Institute/National Institutes of Health and by the W81XWH-05-1-0314 Innovator Award from the US Department of Defence Breast Cancer Research Program, Office of the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA, 02115, USA

    Pagona Lagiou, Chung-Cheng Hsieh, Hans-Olov Adami, Dimitrios Trichopoulos & Michelle A. Williams

  2. Department of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Medical Statistics, School of Medicine, University of Athens, Athens, Greece

    Pagona Lagiou & Evangelia Samoli

  3. Department of Cancer Biology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA, USA

    Chung-Cheng Hsieh & Sagano Onoyama

  4. Department of Public Health and Community Health, Faculty of Health Professions, Athens Technological Educational Institute, Athens, Greece

    Areti Lagiou

  5. Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

    Bio Xu

  6. Medical Informatics Center, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Guo-Pei Yu

  7. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA

    Lucy Chie

  8. Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

    Hans-Olov Adami

  9. Department of Community Medicine and General Practice, School of Medicine, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

    Lars J. Vatten

Authors
  1. Pagona Lagiou
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  2. Evangelia Samoli
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  3. Chung-Cheng Hsieh
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  4. Areti Lagiou
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  5. Bio Xu
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  6. Guo-Pei Yu
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  7. Sagano Onoyama
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  8. Lucy Chie
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  9. Hans-Olov Adami
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  10. Lars J. Vatten
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  11. Dimitrios Trichopoulos
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  12. Michelle A. Williams
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Correspondence to Pagona Lagiou.

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Lagiou, P., Samoli, E., Hsieh, CC. et al. Maternal and cord blood hormones in relation to birth size. Eur J Epidemiol 29, 343–351 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10654-014-9914-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10654-014-9914-3

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