Year: 1999
Type: article
Abstract: Early growth and cardiovascular disease Ten years ago studies in Britain showed for the first time that people who had low birth weight were at increased risk of coronary heart disease and the disorders related to it: stroke, non-insulin dependent diabetes, raised blood pressure, and the metabolic syndrome.1–3 In a study of 16 000 men and women born in Hertfordshire death rates from coronary heart disease fell twofold between those at the lower and upper ends of the birth weight distribution. In groups investigated clinically the prevalence of non-insulin dependent diabetes and impaired glucose tolerance fell threefold. Such findings led to the “fetal origins hypothesis”, which states that cardiovascular disease and non-insulin dependent diabetes originate through adapta-tions that the fetus makes when it is undernourished.4
Source: Archives of Disease in Childhood
DOI: 10.1136/adc.80.4.305
Author: D. J P BARKER
Institutions: Southampton General Hospital, MRC Epidemiology Unit
Language: English
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2008207862