Mothers who deliver a low birth weight infant may themselves be at excess risk for cardiovascular disease. We validated maternal recall of infant birth weight after an average follow up of 57 years, and investigated whether older women who reported having delivered low birth weight (LBW) infants (<2500 g) had later elevations in cardiovascular risk factors and were at increased risk for clinical cardiovascular disease. Participants were 446 women (mean age 80 years; 47% black) enrolled in The Health, Aging and Body Composition Study. Women reported birth weight and selected complications for each pregnancy, and pregnancies complicated by hypertension or preeclampsia were excluded. We found strong correlation between recalled and documented birth weights for first births (ICC=0.96) in a randomly selected group of participants, and reliability of recall for first births remained high when considered separately by race, education, income and age. Women who had reported a LBW first birth had a lower current BMI (adjusted for race and age) compared to women with normal weight infants (26.6 vs. 28.0 kg/m²; p=0.057), but they had a higher abdominal circumference (98.1 vs. 95.0 cm; p=0.007). After adjustment for BMI, race and age, women with a history of a LBW vs. normal weight infant had elevated systolic blood pressures (p=0.048) despite higher use of anti-hypertensive medication (p=0.061). Women with LBW infants also had higher levels of IL-6 (p=0.021), fasting insulin (p=0.064), and triglycerides (p=0.071), and they were more insulin resistant (p=0.045) compared to women with a normal weight infant. Women who delivered preterm infants had an elevated risk for cardiovascular disease at age 80 (adjusted odds ratio=2.77, 95% CI 1.06-7.24) compared to women who delivered term infants. Women who had delivered infants both LBW and preterm had markedly elevated cardiovascular risk factors when compared to women with normal weight term infants, and appeared to have the highest risk for clinical cardiovascular disease (adjusted odds ratio=4.21, 95% CI 1.23-14.45). The public health importance of these findings is that a history of LBW or preterm delivery may identify women who would benefit from screening and intervention aimed at risk factors for cardiovascular disease.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-03302005-111246 |
| Date | 20 June 2005 |
| Creators | Catov, Janet M. |
| Contributors | Roberta B. Ness, MD MPH, James M. Roberts, MD, Anne B. Newman, MD MPH, Sheryl F. Kelsey, PhD, Kim C. Sutton-Tyrrell, DrPH, MPH |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-03302005-111246/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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