Abstract
Objectives: To investigate whether high weight in infancy predicts obesity in childhood.
Method: Data from two UK cohorts (Newcastle Growth and Development N = 795, Gateshead Millennium N = 393) and one Finnish (Tampere N = 1262) were combined. Z scores of weight at 3 and 12 months and body mass index (BMI) at 5 and 8 years were categorized as raised/overweight (1 to <2 SD) or high/obese (≥2 SD).
Results: The majority of infants with raised or high weight at birth tended to revert to normal by 3 months and to track in the same category from 3 to 12 months. Although infants with high weight were five times more likely to have BMI ≥ 2 SD at 8 years (p < 0.001), only 22% went on to have BMI ≥ 2 SD, while 64% of infants with raised weight had normal BMI at 8 years. Of children with BMI ≥ 2 SD aged 8 years, only 22% had raised weight in infancy and half had BMI ≥ 2 SD for the first time at that age.
Conclusions: Infants with raised weight in infancy tend to remain so, but most children who go on to have BMI ≥ 2 SD were not unusually heavy infants and the majority of infants with high weight reverted to overweight or normal weight in childhood.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 621-627 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Pediatric Obesity |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue number | 10 |
| Early online date | 11 Jul 2018 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Oct 2018 |
Keywords
- Infancy
- obesity
- overweight
- tracking
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Pediatrics, Perinatology, and Child Health
- Health Policy
- Nutrition and Dietetics
- Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
Access to Document
- Final published version
© 2018 The Authors. Pediatric Obesity published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of World Obesity Federation This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
