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Cord blood leptin may predict adiposity measures in childhood, adolescence
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Measures of adiposity in childhood and adolescence may be related to cord blood leptin and adiponectin levels, markers of neonatal fat mass, according to study findings recently published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
Scott M. Nelson, PhD, Muirhead professor of obstetrics and gynecology, University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom, and colleagues evaluated data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children to determine whether neonatal fat mass is associated with adiposity in children at age 9 years (n = 2,775) and adolescents at age 17 years (n = 2,138).
Cord blood leptin (r = 0.33) and cord blood adiponectin (r = 0.14) were positively associated with birth weight. At age 9 years, higher cord blood leptin was associated with fat mass, waist circumference and BMI; this association was insignificant at age 17 years after adjustment for potential confounders.
Cord blood adiponectin was positively associated with fat mass and waist circumference at age 17 years, but not at age 9 years.
“In a longitudinal study of more than 2,000 children we found that cord blood leptin and adiponectin, known surrogates of fetal fat mass, were weakly positively associated with some measures of fat mass in late childhood and adolescence,” Nelson told Endocrine Today. “That the associations were robust to a wide range of confounders that reflect intrauterine, maternal and shared environmental exposures suggests that neonatal fat mass may track into later life. However, the magnitude of the observed associations is small, potentially limiting the impact that neonatal life adiposity has on later outcomes. Moving forward replication of these findings in other longitudinal birth cohorts would be useful.” – by Amber Cox
For more information:
Scott M. Nelson, PhD, can be reached at scott.nelson@glasgow.ac.uk.
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
Perspective
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Ponnusamy Saravanan
There is accumulating evidence that the maternal nutritional environment can program offspring’s health at birth. Children born to both so-called under- and over-nourished mothers have higher risk for obesity and metabolic disorders.
Data from ALSPAC cohort assessed by Simpson and colleagues provide additional evidence in this field of programming of obesity and adiposity. Availability of objective measurements of adiposity at birth or adiposity-adjusted leptin and adiponectin levels would have strengthened the findings. However, this observation highlights the following critical points: higher birth weight independently predicts waist circumference and BMI at 9 and 17 years of age; and biomarkers of adiposity at birth may help to predict adiposity in later life, although these data have limitations, as acknowledged by the authors.
This study’s interesting results calls for replication of their findings. It also raises the importance of studying ethnic minority populations who have higher adiposity for a given birth weight (and BMI in adults) as well as the role of maternal factors (including micronutrients, hyperglycemia, and other maternal fuels, such as amino acids and fatty acids) that may influence the leptin and adiponectin levels at birth.
While we wait for these studies, what does this mean in clinical practice? The study raises the importance of early childhood nutrition, especially for children born to mothers with high metabolic risk. While the protective role of exclusive breastfeeding in the first 6 months of life is accepted and advised by most guidelines, the proportion of exclusively breastfed children is still poor across the world. Improving exclusive breastfeeding has to be one of the key strategies to reduce the obesity/adiposity burden of the next generation.
Disclosure: Saravanan reports no relevant financial disclosures.
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