title: High and low birth weight and its implication for growth and bone development in childhood and adolescence.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Children's Hospital, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany. frickeo@uni-koeln.de
authors.forename: Oliver
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Fricke
authors.forename: Oliver
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Semler
authors.forename: Angelika
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Stabrey
authors.forename: Baerbel
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Tutlewski
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Remer
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Herkenrath
authors.forename: Eckhard
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Schoenau