Early life factors and childhood obesity development

Identifier:  TDX:2472

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX2472

Authors:  Fernández Barrés, Sílvia

Abstract:
Childhood obesity is one of the main public health problems and starts in early life. Thus identifying risk factors could help to prevent childhood obesity development. The main objective of this thesis was to investigate the prospective association between potentially modifiable factors in pregnancy and infancy, and offspring childhood obesity development. We used data from two birth cohorts studies INMA project (Spain) and Project Viva (USA). We explored the associations between several pre and postnatal risk factors and childhood general and abdominal obesity, cardiometabolic risk and child longitudinal growth trajectories. We found that modifiable early-life risk factors play an important role in obesity development. The combinations of modifiable risk factors that predict higher obesity differed across populations. However, rapid infant weight gain is a common risk factor of general and abdominal obesity in childhood. Our findings suggest that the Mediterranean diet during pregnancy may have a protective effect on birth size, growth pattern and childhood abdominal adiposity in early childhood. However, this dietary pattern may not be associated with childhood general obesity and cardiometabolic risk.