Early-life origins of adult disease: national longitudinal population-based study of the United States.

ABSTRACT:

Objectives

We examined the relation between low birth weight and childhood family and neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage and disease onset in adulthood.

Methods

Using US nationally representative longitudinal data, we estimated hazard models of the onset of asthma, hypertension, diabetes, and stroke, heart attack, or heart disease. The sample contained 4387 children who were members of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics in 1968; they were followed up to 2007, when they were aged 39 to 56 years. Our research design included sibling comparisons of disease onset among siblings with different birth weights.

Results

The odds ratios of having asthma, hypertension, diabetes, and stroke, heart attack, or heart disease by age 50 years for low-birth weight babies vs others

SUBMITTER: Johnson RC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3222421 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature