ArticleCommunications medicine2023
Association of birth and childhood weight with risk of chronic diseases and multimorbidity in adulthood.
Article in Communications medicine, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- The magnitude of multimorbidity in childhood: a global systematic review.Systematic reviews · 2026Pooled it
- Predicting childhood overweight and obesity at school entrance using healthcare, demographic, and socioeconomic data in Wales, UK.European journal of public health · 2026Article
- Two Sides of a Coin: Molecular, metabolic, and Phenotypic Convergence in Pediatric Undernutrition and Obesity.Current obesity reports · 2026Review
- The association between childhood body size, adulthood lifestyle, and risk of 50 health conditions.Communications medicine · 2026Article
- Prenatal exposure to metals and metal mixtures influences birth weight in affected populations in the Republic of Suriname, South America.Environmental research · 2025Article
- Epigenetic mediation may explain intergenerational associations between maternal obesogenic lifestyle and children's birth weight: findings from the NorthPop prospective birth cohort.Clinical epigenetics · 2025Article
- Exposure to sugar rationing in first 1000 days after conception and long term cardiovascular outcomes: natural experiment study.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2025Article
- Assessment of fetal cardiac morphology and function in fetal growth restriction: insights from fetal heart quantification technology.Quantitative imaging in medicine and surgery · 2025Article
- Postpartum depression in relation to chronic diseases and multimorbidity in women's mid-late life: a prospective cohort study of UK Biobank.BMC medicine · 2025Article
- Article
- Healthy aging in individuals born after assisted reproductive technology is a research area for the future.Nature aging · 2024Article
- Early life events may be the first steps on the multistep path to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.Scientific reports · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundLittle is known about the relationship between early life body size and occurrence of life-course multiple chronic diseases (multimorbidity). We aim to evaluate associations of birth weight, childhood body size, and their changes with the risks of chronic diseases and multimorbidity.
methodsThis prospective cohort study included 246,495 UK Biobank participants (aged 40-69 years) who reported birth weight and childhood body size at 10 years old. Birth weight was categorized into low, normal, and high; childhood body size was reported as being thinner, average, or plumper. Multimorbidity was defined as having two or more of 38 chronic conditions retrieved from inpatient hospital data until 31 December, 2020. The Cox regression and quasi-Poisson mixed effects models were used to estimate the associations.
resultsWe show that 57,071 (23.2%) participants develop multimorbidity. Low birth weight (hazard ratio [HR] 1.29, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.26-1.33), high birth weight (HR 1.02, 95% CI > 1.00-1.05), thinner (HR 1.21, 95% CI 1.18-1.23) and plumper body size (HR 1.06, 95% CI 1.04-1.09) are associated with higher risks of multimorbidity. A U-shaped relationship between birth weight and multimorbidity is observed. Changing to be thinner or plumper is associated with multimorbidity and many conditions, compared to changing to be average.
conclusionsLow birth weight, being thinner and changing to have a thinner body size in childhood are associated with higher risks of developing multimorbidity and many chronic conditions in adulthood. Early monitoring and maintaining a normal body size in childhood could have life-course benefits for preventing multimorbidity above and beyond individual conditions.
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Registered trials
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