Infant Growth, Nutrition Linked to Heart Disease


Updated 7:13 PM ET April 19, 2001
By Patricia Reaney
LONDON (Reuters) - Improving the health and nutrition of infants and babies
could help to reduce heart disease later in life, researchers said Friday.

Medical studies have already established that small babies have a higher
risk of developing heart disease as they grow older.

But scientists at the National Public Health Institute in Helsinki and the
University of Southampton in England said better nutrition before and in the
first year after birth could help to reduce the risk.

"In our view the cornerstone of any policy to reduce the commonest cause of
death in the world, which is coronary heart disease, is to improve the
nutrition and growth of babies before and after birth and to prevent babies
who were thin at birth from becoming overweight in childhood," Professor
David Barker, an epidemiologist at Southampton, said in an interview.

In a unique study Barker and his Finnish colleagues were able to examine the
infant and childhood growth patterns of 357 men who later developed or died
from heart disease.

"It's never before been possible to see how men who get coronary heart
disease grew as children," Barker explained.

All the men in the study had been born between 1934 and 1944 in the Helsinki
University Hospital and their growth patterns had been monitored from birth
until they reached 12 years of age.

The researchers discovered that men who died from heart disease grew very
differently from other children when they were boys.

All the heart disease sufferers had been born small and didn't grow well in
infancy. They stayed small up until they were one year old. After that they
compensated by putting on weight but not height.

"If none of the boys had been born thin, or if they had reached average
height and weight in one year there would have been half as much coronary
heart disease and a huge prolongation of life and a reduction in premature
death," said Barker.

The researchers aren't sure why early growth factors affect heart disease
risk but they suspect that slow growth before and in the first year after
birth permanently alters the way the children's bodies handle sugar and fat
in a way that increases their heart disease risk.

"The more growth that is achieved between birth and one year the better,
said Barker.

Smoking, high blood pressure, cholesterol and obesity are leading risk
factors for heart disease.

Infant Growth, Nutrition Linked to Heart Disease

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