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Associations of Leg Length, Trunk Length, and Total Adult Height With Ménière's: Cross-Sectional Analysis in the UK
Jessica S Tyrrell1, Mark S Taylor, David Whinney
11European Centre for Environment and Human Health, University of Exeter Medical School, University of Exeter, The Knowledge Spa, Truro Campus, Cornwall, United Kingdom; 2Faculty of Public Health and Social Work, University of Trnava, Trnava, Slovakia; 3Department of ENT Surgery, Royal Cornwall Hospital, Truro, United Kingdom; and 4Department of Paediatrics, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Melbourne, Australia.
Objectives:
To investigate whether adverse intrauterine and/or childhood exposures, using established anthropometric measures (e.g., components of adult height, including total height, leg length, and trunk length) as a proxy for childhood exposures, are associated with self-reported Ménière's disease.
Design:
Cross-sectional data from the UK Biobank were used to compare 1,327 self-reported Ménière's cases with 479,500 controls. The authors used logistic regression models to investigate the relation of Ménière's disease with the components of adult height. Models were adjusted for a range of potential confounders including age, sex, body mass index, ethnicity, type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, and socioeconomic status.
Results:
In the UK Biobank, Ménière's was inversely associated with overall stature (odds ratio [OR] per standard deviation increase in height, 0.87; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.80-0.94) and leg length (OR, 0.88; 95% CI, 0.82-0.94) in fully adjusted models. No association was noted in adjusted models with trunk length (OR, 0.94; 95% CI, 0.88-1.01).
Conclusions:
The specific association between leg length, a potential marker of adverse childhood environments, and Ménière's may suggest that early-life environmental exposures that influence skeletal growth may also influence the risk of developing Ménière's in later life.