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Low birth weight, unhealthy adult lifestyle may lead to type 2 diabetes
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A low birth weight combined with unhealthy habits in adulthood can lead to a greater chance of developing type 2 diabetes, according to research in The BMJ.
In an analysis of health and lifestyle data from three large ongoing trials, researchers found that 18% of type 2 diabetes cases were attributable to the combined effect of low birth weight and unhealthy habits, including poor nutrition and smoking.
“Most cases of type 2 diabetes could be prevented by the adoption of a healthier lifestyle, but these findings suggest that efforts focused on early life development, such as improving nutrition for pregnant women, would prevent additional cases,” Lu Qi, MD, PhD, associate professor in the department of nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said in a press release.
Lu Qi
Qi, Yanping Li, MD, PhD, of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and colleagues analyzed data from 149,794 adults participating in three ongoing prospective trials: the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, the Nurses’ Health Study and the Nurses’ Health Study II. Participants included in the analysis did not have cardiovascular disease, cancer or diabetes at baseline, provided birth weight data and had no missing baseline data on diet, physical activity, smoking, alcohol consumption or body weight. Participants also completed food frequency questionnaires.
Researchers documented 11,709 new cases of type 2 diabetes during 20 to 30 years of follow-up and observed a consistent association between low birth weight and risk for developing type 2 diabetes in all three study cohorts.
Researchers found that the multivariate adjusted RR of developing type 2 diabetes was 1.45 per kilogram of lower birth weight (95% CI, 1.32-1.59) and 2.1 per unhealthy lifestyle factor (95% CI, 1.71-2.58). The RR for developing type 2 diabetes with a combined per kilogram of low birth weight and per unhealthy lifestyle factor was 2.86 (95% CI, 2.26-3.63), more than the addition of risk associated with each factor, according to researchers.
Researchers found that 22% of the RR was attributable to lower birth weight alone, 59% was attributable to unhealthy lifestyle alone and 18% was attributable to their interaction.
“Our findings suggest that the public health consequences of unhealthy lifestyles would be larger in low birth weight populations,” Li said in a press release. “This is of critical importance in the developing countries undergoing rapid epidemiologic transition from traditional to Western lifestyles, such as China and India, where the prevalence of the Western dietary pattern, cigarette smoking, sedentary activities, obesity and diabetes has been increasing dramatically, and low birth weight is still highly prevalent.”– by Regina Schaffer
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
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