Abstract
Faster growth seems to be a common factor in several hypotheses relating early life exposures to subsequent health. This study aims to investigate the association between body mass index (BMI) trajectories during infancy/childhood and later metabolic risk in order to identify sensitive periods of growth affecting health. In a first step, BMI trajectories of 3301 European children that participated in the multi-centre Identification and Prevention of Dietary and Lifestyle-induced Health Effects in Children and Infants (IDEFICS) study were modelled using linear-spline mixed-effects models. The estimated random coefficients indicating initial subject-specific BMI and rates of change in BMI over time were used as exposure variables in a second step and related to a metabolic syndrome (MetS) score and its single components based on conditional regression models (mean age at outcome assessment: 8.5 years). All exposures under investigation, i.e. BMI at birth, rates of BMI change during infancy (0 to
Original language | English |
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Journal | European Journal of Epidemiology |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Accepted/In press - Aug 22 2015 |
Keywords
- Childhood BMI growth
- Data reduction
- IDEFICS study
- Linear-spline mixed-effects model
- Metabolic risk score
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Epidemiology