Research published today indicates that the risk of heart disease in adulthood is more strongly related to how quickly children gain weight between the ages of two and eleven than their actual body weight at any particular age. Scientists believe this is linked to differences in insulin processing in later life.
The British Heart Foundation (BHF) funded research, which is led by Professor David Barker of the University of Southampton, is published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Professor Barker commented: “Our research shows that it is rate of weight gain, not the degree of fatness at any one time, which is the main predictor of future problems. Those children that may be most at risk from later heart disease are effectively invisible – you wouldn’t be able to pick them out immediately in a primary school classroom as being at risk. You would need to monitor their body weight over a longer period.”
The research team looked at the medical records of more than 8000 people in Finland. Their analysis showed that small size at birth, thinness at two years, and high body mass at 11 years were all associated with later risk of heart disease.
A path of growth that combined these factors was associated with the greatest risk of later heart disease. People who were small and thin up to the age of two and gained weight more quickly than their peers thereafter, catching up with, or even surpassing them by 11 years were most at risk. Adults that developed in this way were resistant to the effects of insulin and were most likely to later develop heart disease.
Conversely, greater growth in babies of all sizes in the first two years was associated with a lower incidence of coronary events.
“Slow early development and undernutrition in the womb may programme a ‘thrifty’ metabolism, which includes insulin resistance that becomes inappropriate with adequate or excess nutrition in childhood,” added Professor Barker.