BIRTH-WEIGHT AND ADULT HEALTH OUTCOMES IN A BIETHNIC POPULATION IN THE USA

Recent data indicate that low-birthweight adults are at a higher risk than their high-birthweight peers of developing ischaemic heart diseas e or a cluster of conditions known as the IRS, which includes dyslipid aemias, hypertension, unfavourable body fat distribution and NIDDM. Th us far these observations have been limited to Caucasians from the Uni ted Kingdom. We extended these observations to a broader segment of th e general population by studying the association of birthweight and ad ult health outcomes in a biethnic population of the United States, We divided a group of 564 young adult Mexican-American and non-Hispanic w hite men and women participants of the San Antonio Heart Study into te rtiles of birthweight and compared metabolic, anthropometric, haemodyn amic, and demographic characteristics across these tertile categories. Additionally, we studied birthweight as a predictor of the clustering of diseases associated with the IRS, defined as any two or more of th e following conditions: hypertension, NIDDM or impaired glucose tolera nce, dyslipidaemia. Normotensive, non-diabetic individuals whose birth weight was in the lowest tertile had significantly higher levels of fa sting serum insulin and a more truncal fat deposition pattern than ind ividuals whose birthweight was in the highest tertile, independently o f sex, ethnicity, and current socioeconomic status. Also, the odds of expressing the IRS increased 1.72 times (95% confidence interval: 1.16 -2.55) for each tertile decrease in birthweight. These findings were i ndependent of sex, ethnicity, and current levels of socioeconomic stat us or obesity. In conclusion, low birthweight could be a major indepen dent risk factor for the development of adult chronic conditions commo nly associated with insulin resistance in the general population.