Original ArticleEighty-Year Trends in Infant Weight and Length Growth: The Fels Longitudinal Study
Section snippets
Methods
The sample consisted of 620 singleton American infants of European ancestory (302 girls; 318 boys) participating in the Fels Longitudinal Study, which began in 1929 as a study of normative child growth and development and continues today as a study of the early life antecedents of chronic diseases of aging.18 Mother-infant dyads living in Yellow Springs and nearby towns in southwestern Ohio have been enrolled from 1929 to present day.
All protocols and informed consent documents used in the Fels
Results
The average birth year in the analysis sample was 1963, with a range of 1930 to 2008 (Table I). Mean imputed gestational age decreased over time, while birth weight and maternal BMI generally increased over time, with 17.9% of mothers in the 1930 to 1949 cohort being overweight or obese compared with 47.6% of mothers in the 1990 to 2008 cohort (P values for trends <.01). Childhood BMI at 10 years of age also increased over time, with an increase of approximately 3 kg/m2 occurring between the
Discussion
We present the secular trends in the growth of American infants of European ancestry over an 80-year period marked by large shifts in the prevailing food and energetic environment and in maternal BMI. Unlike earlier analyses,9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 we were able to test whether any trends were changed by variations in the infant maturational clock and also maternal BMI and age.
A significant increase over time was observed for birth weight and birth length. Alberan22 has reported that birth weight
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2017, Annales d'EndocrinologieCitation Excerpt :Regarding birth length, there is no or very small secular trend [11]. However, a recent study using data from 620 singleton American infants of European ancestry participating to the Fels Longitudinal Study found a 1.0 cm increase in birth length between the 1950–1969 and the 1970–1989 cohorts (approximately 0.25 cm per decade) [12]. Larger secular trends in neonatal length have also been observed in various developing countries [13,14].
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Supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (R01 HD012252 and R01 HD053685). The authors declare no conflicts of interest.