Excess Early Postnatal Weight Gain Leads to Increased Abdominal Fat in Young Children
Table 1
Associations between child and parental characteristics and tertiles of Z-score weight gain for length gain rate in the first 3 postnatal months.
Tertiles of weight gain rate for length gain rate in the first 3 months after birth
1st -score WLG tertile (mean : −1.1)
2nd -score WLG tertile (mean : −0.049)
3rd -score WLG tertile (mean : 1.1)
value
Child characteristics
Infancy
Gender (% boys)
53
45
48
0.49a
Gestational age (days)#
282 (275–288)
279 (271–286)
281 (274–286)
0.07c
Birth weight (grams)
3564 ± 46
3430 ± 46
3642 ± 46
0.005b
Birth length (cm)
<0.001b
Z-score birth size (SD)
0.056b
Mean weight gain (g/day)
<0.001b
Mean length gain (mm/day)
0.95b
Breastfeeding (% ever)
79
79
80
0.98a
Exclusive breastfeeding (days)#*
66 (26–127)
72 (28–136)
79 (40–145)
0.26c
Childhood
Age at 5 years visit (years)#
5.4 (5.2–5.5)
5.3 (5.2–5.4)
5.3 (5.2–5.4)
0.16c
Weight (kg)
<0.001b
Height (cm)
<0.001b
BMI (kg/m2)#
14.8 (14.0–15.4)
14.9 (14.0–16.1)
15.6 (14.8–16.6)
<0.001c
Waist circumference (mm)#
52.2 (50.2–53.9)
52.0 (49.9–54.1)
54.0 (51.5–56.3)
<0.001c
Systolic blood pressure (mmHg)
105 ± 0.75
105 ± 0.76
106 ± 0.76
0.46b
Diastolic blood pressure (mmHg)
55 ± 0.68
56 ± 0.68
55 ± 0.68
0.60b
Parental characteristics
Maternal age at childbirth (years)
0.70b
Maternal BMI (kg/m2)
0.58b
Paternal BMI (kg/m2)
0.99b
Maternal gestational diabetes (%)
0
0
3
0.11d
Maternal smoking-prenatal (%)
6
6
1
0.13a
Parental smoking-postnatal (%)
0.039a
Neither one of the parents
62
70
79
One parent
31
20
19
Both parents
7
10
2
Socio economic status (% high educated)
79
76
69
0.26a
Maternal ethnicity (% western)
93
91
92
0.85a
Values are means with standard errors in case of continuous variables and percentages in case of frequencies. In case of skewed data (), medians with interquartile range were presented. Not normally distributed. Within those ever breastfed. Chi-square test. ANOVA. Kruskall Wallis test. Fisher’s exact test.