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Longitudinal study of variation in body mass index in middle-aged UK females

AGE volume 34, pages 1285–1294 (2012)Cite this article

Abstract

The importance of changing patterns of obesity in society and its implications for public health are well recognized. However, the adult life course of body mass index (BMI) changes in individuals over time is largely unknown and has mostly been extrapolated from cross-sectional studies. The present study examines individual specific variation of BMI during a 15-year follow-up period in a community-based sample of UK females. We attempted to establish whether there is a common, generalized pattern which captures variation in BMI over time. The participants of this study belong to a prospective population cohort of British women studied intensively since 1989: the Chingford Study. The sample originally consisted of 1,003 women aged 45–68 years, who were assessed annually for BMI during follow-up period. Polynomial regression models were used to assess longitudinal BMI variation. We observed a great stability in individual BMI variation during the follow-up period, reflected by high correlations between the baseline BMI and follow-up BMI 10 and 15 years later (r = 0.876, N = 810, and r = 0.824, N = 638, respectively). We also found that three different major age-related patterns in BMI could be clearly identified: no change in 30.6% in 58% it increased and in 11.4% it decreased with age. Thus, our data suggest that individual age-related changes in BMI are very different. Therefore, simply combining all individuals into groups by any other criteria (age, sex, etc.) and overlooking the distinctive patterns of BMI change may lead to biased inferences in epidemiologic and etiologic research of the future.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank all the Chingford members who participated in the study and to acknowledge the financial support from the Wellcome Trust and Arthritis Research UK for funding the Chingford Study. The study was also partially supported by Israel Science Foundation (Grant #994/10).

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Affiliations

  1. Department of Twin Research and Genetic Epidemiology, Kings College London, St Thomas’ Hospital, London, SE1 7EH, UK

    Gregory Livshits, Frances M. K. Williams, Deborah J. Hart & Timothy D. Spector

  2. Human Population Biology Research Unit, Department of Anatomy and Anthropology, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel

    Gregory Livshits & Ida Malkin

  3. Department of Rheumatology, Whipps Cross University Hospital, Leytonstone, London, UK

    Alan Hakim

Authors
  1. Gregory Livshits
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  2. Ida Malkin
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  3. Frances M. K. Williams
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  4. Deborah J. Hart
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  5. Alan Hakim
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  6. Timothy D. Spector
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Timothy D. Spector.

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Livshits, G., Malkin, I., Williams, F.M.K. et al. Longitudinal study of variation in body mass index in middle-aged UK females. AGE 34, 1285–1294 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11357-011-9299-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11357-011-9299-0

Keywords

  • BMI
  • Follow-up, curve fitting
  • Age-dependent patterns
  • Longitudinal
  • Weight gain