Pre- and postnatal determinants of childhood body size: cohort and sibling analyses

Growing evidence suggests obesity may have its roots in early life but it is still uncertain whether prenatal factors operate primarily though altering early infant growth. It is also still unclear if rapid growth during selected time periods is more important than other time periods in predicting future body size. Using prospectively collected data on 20,523 participants born from 1959 to 1966 (10,327 boys; 10,196 girls) of the Collaborative Perinatal Project, we investigated the associations between pre- and postnatal factors and childhood body size at age 7 years and compared these associations across linear, logistic and quantile regression models. Maternal body mass index (BMI), maternal pregnancy weight gain, birth weight and postnatal weight change for three time periods (birth to 4 months; 4-12 months; 1-4 years) were all positively and independently associated with BMI at age 7 years. Rapid growth during each time period had a similar association BMI at age 7 years. For example, a 10-percentile increase in weight increased the probability of being overweight at age 7 years by approximately two-fold regardless of time period (OR = 1.8-2.2 for boys and girls). Using same-sex siblings (n = 571 boy sets; n = 651 girl sets) from the same cohort, we observed that siblings with higher BMI at age 7 years than their same-sex siblings were more likely to have higher maternal pregnancy weight gain, higher maternal pre-pregnancy BMI, higher birth weight and increased rate of weight gain during the three time periods. These consistent findings both from the overall cohort and the sibling analyses suggest that there are multiple, rather than specific critical periods of influence shaping childhood body size.