Introduction:
There is several evidence that birth weight and growth in early life are associated with risk of the metabolic syndrome in adulthood, although the relative importance of prenatal vs. postnatal growth for such associations remains controversial. Insulin resistance and body composition may play a key role in the ‘programming’ of such diseases, through itself being programmed by early growth, and perhaps also by being a mediator of the programming process.
Methods:
We investigated a sub-sample of 119 subjects (aged 20-21) from an original cohort of 3500 subjects in Tanjungsari Cohort Study, Indonesia. Univariate correlation and multivariate regression were used to examine association of birth weight and early growth with body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), fat mass (FM), fat-free mass (FFM), body cell mass (BCM), and metabolic marker: total cholesterol (TC), LDL-cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol, triglyceride (TG), fasting blood glucose (FBG), HOMA-IR respectively.
Early growth determined by calculate changes in SD scores between birth and two years were calculated for weight (scores at two years minus scores at birth). FM, FFM and BCM by multi-frequency bio-impedance analysis (Bodystat Quadscan 4000, UK).
Results:
Birth weight were positively correlated to WC (r=0.25, p<0.01), WHR (r=0.19, p<0.05), FFM (kg) (r=0.36, p=<0.001) and BCM (r=0.28, p<0.05). Early growth were positively correlated to WHR (r=0.2, p<0.05) and BCM (r=0.2, p<0.05). No correlation between birth weight and early growth with metabolic markers.
Conclusion:
Birth weight and early growth have correlation with some components of body composition but not correlated with metabolic markers.