High and low birth weight and its implication for growth and bone development in childhood and adolescence.
OBJECTIVE
To investigate the relationship of birth weight (BW) to anthropometric measures, local body composition and bone development.


METHODS
284 individuals (age 5-19 yr, 145 females) were recruited from the Dortmund Nutritional and Anthropometric Longitudinally Designed (DONALD) study. Parameters of bone development (cortical bone mineral density [BMDcort], endosteal circumference [CE]) and of local body composition (cross-sectional fat area [FA]) were analyzed by pQCT at the forearm. Parameters were transformed into SD scores to adjust for age or height.


RESULTS
BW predicted weight-SDS (R = 0.221), height-SDS (R = 0.260) and FA-SDS (R = 0.150). Individuals with lower BW (< 10th percentile) had lower weight-SDS (p < 0.01), height-SDS (p < 0.01), BMDcort-SDS (p = 0.02) and higher CE-SDS (p = 0.05). BMDcort was correlated with BW (r = -0.319) and FA (r = -0.283) in pubertal females.


CONCLUSIONS
BW is characterized by direct and indirect effects on growth, body composition and bone development.
Fricke
Oliver
O
Children's Hospital, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany. frickeo@uni-koeln.de
Semler
Oliver
O
Stabrey
Angelika
A
Tutlewski
Baerbel
B
Remer
Thomas
T
Herkenrath
Peter
P
Schoenau
Eckhard
E