University of Copenhagen - The Faculty of Health and Medical SciencesJun 24 2024 The findings highlight the need for prevention and treatment approaches for children with obesity who were born with a lower birth weight.
Our study shows that the link between low birth weight and cardiometabolic disease risk can be detected already in childhood – and that this is the case for both the actual birth weight and the genetic determinants of birth weight." "It also supports the theory that individuals who were born low birth weight, or who are genetically predisposed to low birth weight, may be more vulnerable to health hazards – such as excess visceral fat – throughout the course of life.
To learn more, the team of scientists analysed a Danish cohort called The HOLBÆK Study of more than 4,000 children and adolescents with and without obesity. The cohort contains a wide variety of health-related data including birth weight, BMI, clinical evaluations, blood samples, biomarkers, and a polygenic score for birth weight – a calculation that combines the effect of many genetic variants related to birth weight.
The reason could be, literally, skin deep. The body normally stores fat in fat cells beneath the skin, called subcutaneous fat. But these fat stores are may be underdeveloped in children who are born underweight, and they can therefore not expand as needed to store more fat.