Year: 2009
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Cardiovascular disease is common in the general population, affecting 40-60% of adults older\nthan 60 years of age. Many lines of evidence indicate an important role of early life events in influencing\nlater susceptibility to cardiovascular disease. Barker and Osmond demonstrated that\nareas of Britain with the highest neonatal mortality rates early in the 20th century also tended to\nhave the highest rates of coronary heart disease many decades later.After this, observational\nstudies showed that low birth weight and weight at one year were associated with an increased\nrisk of later cardiovascular disease, especially in subjects who show a postnatal catch-up growth\nand become obese as adults. The most commonly studied risk factors for cardiovascular disease\ninclude blood pressure and total cholesterol levels. Several studies showed small but consistent\neffects. These observations resulted in the “fetal origins of adult disease” hypothesis. More\nrecently, this hypothesis has been transformed to a more general “developmental plasticity hypothesis”, which suggests that an organism may develop in various ways, depending on the\nparticular environment or setting. In this process, adverse environmental exposures in fetal\nand early postnatal life lead to adaptations that permanently program the fetus’ structure, physiology\nand metabolism. These adaptations may be beneficial in the short term but have adverse\nconsequences at birth and in postnatal life, leading to both low birth weight and cardiovascular\ndisease in adulthood. Thus, cardiovascular disease may at least partly originate in early fetal\nlife.
Author: Miranda Geelhoed
Language: English
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funders: ZonMw, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam
OpenAlex ID: W2143127308