Abstract
Background:
Infant weight and weight gain are positively associated with later obesity, but whether there is a particular critical time during infancy remains uncertain.
Objective:
The aim was to investigate when and how weight and weight gain during infancy become associated with childhood obesity.
Methods:
In a cohort representing 28 340 children born from 1959–67 and measured in Copenhagen schools, 962 obese children (2007 World Health Organization criteria), were compared with a 5% randomly selected sub-cohort of 1417 children. Information on weight at birth, 2 weeks, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 9 months was retrieved from health visitors’ records. Odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for childhood obesity by tertiles of weight at each age and by change in tertiles of weight between two consecutive measurements were estimated using multivariate logistic regression with adjustment for indicators of socioeconomic status, preterm birth, and breastfeeding.
Results:
Compared with children in the middle weight-tertile, children with a weight in the upper tertile had a 1.36-fold (CI, 1.10–1.69) to 1.72-fold (CI, 1.36–2.18) higher risk of childhood obesity from birth through 9 months, whereas children in the lower weight-tertile had almost half the risk of obesity from 2 through 9 months. The risk of childhood obesity associated with change in weight-tertile in each interval was stable at ∼1.5-fold per weight-tertile increase throughout infancy.
Conclusions:
Infant weight and weight gain are associated with obesity in childhood already during the first months of life. Determinants of weight gain shortly after birth may be a suitable target for prevention of obesity.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Axel Skytthe, Ph.D., and Professor Tina Kold Jensen for their assistance in collection of the infant health visitor data, current and former infant health visitors Charlotte Westerlin Nielsen, Ruth Lewkowitz, Inga Axelsen, Anna Grosen, Elisabeth Olsson and Birte Sørensen for information about the infant health visitor’s system in the 1960s, and Michael Gamborg, Ph.D., for assistance in management of the Copenhagen School Health Record Register and advice on statistical analysis. This study received support from the Danish Heart Foundation, the Rosalie Petersen’s Foundation, the Aase and Ejner Danielsen’s Foundation, the Danish PhD School of Molecular Metabolism, University of Copenhagen, the Novo Nordisk Foundation and the Capital region of Denmark. This work was carried out as a part of the research program of the Danish Obesity Research Center (DanORC). DanORC is supported by the Danish Council for Strategic Research (grant 2101–06–0005).
Author contributions
The authors’ responsibilities were as follows: TIAS designed research; TIAS, LGA, CH, and JLB conducted research; TIAS provided the data; LGA, JLB, TIAS, CH and KFM analyzed data; LGA, JLB, TIAS and KFM wrote the paper; LGA had final responsibility for final manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Andersen, L., Holst, C., Michaelsen, K. et al. Weight and weight gain during early infancy predict childhood obesity: a case-cohort study. Int J Obes 36, 1306–1311 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2012.134
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2012.134
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