Stability of the associations between early life risk indicators and adolescent overweight over the evolving obesity epidemic. ...

• Main Authors: Graversen, Lise, Sørensen, Thorkild IA, Petersen, Liselotte, Sovio, Ulla, Kaakinen, Marika, Sandbæk, Annelli, Laitinen, Jaana, Taanila, Anja, Pouta, Anneli, Järvelin, Marjo-Riitta, Obel, Carsten
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2014
• Subjects: Adolescent; Child; Finland; Humans; Obesity; Overweight; Risk Factors; Northern Finland
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.17863/cam.56497; https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/309408

BACKGROUND: Pre- and perinatal factors and preschool body size may help identify children developing overweight, but these factors might have changed during the development of the obesity epidemic. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to assess the associations between early life risk indicators and overweight at the age of 9 and 15 years at different stages of the obesity epidemic. METHODS: We used two population-based Northern Finland Birth Cohorts including 4111 children born in 1966 (NFBC1966) and 5414 children born in 1985-1986 (NFBC1986). In both cohorts, we used the same a priori defined prenatal factors, maternal body mass index (BMI), birth weight, infant weight (age 5 months and 1 year), and preschool BMI (age 2-5 years). We used internal references in early childhood to define percentiles of body size (<50, 50-75, 75-90 and >90) and generalized linear models to study the association with overweight, according to the International Obesity Taskforce (IOTF) definitions, at the ages of 9 and 15 years. RESULTS: ...