Pathways into and out of overweight and obesity from infancy to mid-childhood.
C M Wright, L Marryat, J McColl, U Harjunmaa, T J Cole
Author Information
C M Wright: School of Medicine, College of MVLS, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK. ORCID
L Marryat: School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK.
J McColl: School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK.
U Harjunmaa: Center for Child Health Research, University of Tampere Faculty of Medicine and Life Sciences, and Tampere University Hospital, Tampere, Finland.
T J Cole: Population, Policy and Practice Programme, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, London, UK. ORCID
OBJECTIVES: To investigate whether high weight in infancy predicts obesity in childhood. METHOD: Data from two UK cohorts (Newcastle Growth and Development N = 795, Gateshead Millennium N = 393) and one Finnish (Tampere N = 1262) were combined. Z scores of weight at 3 and 12 months and body mass index (BMI) at 5 and 8 years were categorized as raised/overweight (1 to <2 SD) or high/obese (≥2 SD). RESULTS: The majority of Infants with raised or high weight at birth tended to revert to normal by 3 months and to track in the same category from 3 to 12 months. Although Infants with high weight were five times more likely to have BMI ≥ 2 SD at 8 years (p < 0.001), only 22% went on to have BMI ≥ 2 SD, while 64% of Infants with raised weight had normal BMI at 8 years. Of children with BMI ≥ 2 SD aged 8 years, only 22% had raised weight in infancy and half had BMI ≥ 2 SD for the first time at that age. CONCLUSIONS: Infants with raised weight in infancy tend to remain so, but most children who go on to have BMI ≥ 2 SD were not unusually heavy Infants and the majority of Infants with high weight reverted to overweight or normal weight in childhood.
