Journal
CIRCULATION
Volume 112, Issue 10, Pages 1414-1418Publisher
LIPPINCOTT WILLIAMS & WILKINS
DOI: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.104.528356
Keywords
cerebrovascular disorders; coronary disease; epidemiology; birth weight
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Background - Birth weight is inversely associated with cardiovascular disease risk factors, but few studies have examined the association with disease end points, in particular with stroke risk. Furthermore, previous studies demonstrating an inverse association between birth weight and coronary heart disease (CHD) risk have been conducted on populations born in the early part of the 20th century, when infant mortality rates were high. If the environmental factors associated with improvements in infant mortality rates over the last century explain the inverse association between birth weight and CHD risk, one would expect weaker associations in more contemporary birth cohorts. Methods and Results - We have examined the association in a large birth cohort of 10 803 ( with an average of 239 000 person-years of follow-up) singleton births that occurred between 1950 and 1956. Our outcomes were hospital admissions for, and fatalities from, CHD (n = 296) and stroke (n = 107). Birth weight was inversely associated with CHD and stroke. The age-adjusted hazards ratio for a 1-kg increase in birth weight was 0.62 (95% CI 0.50 to 0.78) for CHD and 0.38 (95% CI 0.24 to 0.60) for stroke. Adjustment for gestational age, social class at birth, height and body mass index at school entry, gravidity, maternal age at birth, pregnancy-induced hypertension, antepartum hemorrhage, and maternal height did not alter the association with CHD but attenuated the association with stroke to 0.48 (95% CI 0.30 to 0.76). This attenuation resulted largely from adjustment for gestational age, which was linearly inversely related to stroke risk. Adjusted hazard ratios per sex and gestational age standardized z score of birth weight were 0.85 (95% CI 0.73 to 0.97) for CHD and 0.74 (95% CI 0.71 to 0.88) for stroke. Conclusions - Birth weight is inversely associated with CHD and stroke in a population born at a time when environmental circumstances, as indexed by low infant mortality rates, were relatively advantageous for infants.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available