| Title: | Birth weight and cardiometabolic risk factors: a discordant twin study in the UK Biobank |
| Journal: | Journal of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease |
| Published: | 4 Oct 2022 |
| Pubmed: | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36193707/ |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1017/s2040174422000538 |
| URL: | ~Ehttps://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/1156821A48662598B4FDF5E637F376CF/S2040174422000538a.pdf/div-class-title-birth-weight-and-cardiometabolic-risk-factors-a-discordant-twin-study-in-the-uk-biobank-div.pdf~ |
Publication 8134
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Abstract
One of the longstanding debates in life-course epidemiology is whether an adverse intrauterine environment, often proxied by birth weight, causally increases the future risk of cardiometabolic disease. The use of a discordant twin study design, which controls for the influence of shared genetic and environmental confounding factors, may be useful to investigate whether this relationship is causal. We conducted a discordant twin study of 120 monozygotic (MZ) and 148 dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs from the UK Biobank to explore the potential causal relationships between birth weight and a broad spectrum of later-life cardiometabolic risk factors. We used a linear mixed model to investigate the association between birth weight and later-life cardiometabolic risk factors for twins, allowing for both within-pair differences and between-pair differences in birth weight. Of primary interest is the within-pair association between differences in birth weight and cardiometabolic risk factors, which could reflect an intrauterine effect on later-life risk factors. We found no strong evidence of association in MZ twins between the within-pair differences in birth weight and most cardiometabolic risk factors in later life, except for nominal associations with C-reactive protein and insulin-like growth factor 1. However, these associations were not replicated in DZ twin pairs. Our study provided no strong evidence for intrauterine effects on later-life cardiometabolic risk factors, which is consistent with previous large-scale studies of singletons testing the potential causal relationship. It does not support the hypothesis that adverse intrauterine environments increase the risk of cardiometabolic disease in later life.4 Authors
- Geng Wang
- Tom A. Bond
- Nicole M. Warrington
- David M. Evans
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