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  • Original Article
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Social and early-life determinants of overweight and obesity in 18-year-old Swedish men

Abstract

Objectives:

To investigate the combined effects of size at birth and maternal education on prevalence of overweight and obesity among 18-year-old men.

Methods:

We studied the associations of weight for gestational age and maternal education with body mass index (BMI), overweight and obesity by multivariate linear and logistic regression, adjusted for mother's age, parity and diabetes in a register-based cohort of 6535 men born between 1973 and 1985. Further adjustments for mother's height, pre-pregnancy weight, weight gain and smoking during pregnancy were made in a subsample of 1103 men born between 1982 and 1985.

Results:

Mean BMI and prevalence of overweight and obesity decreased with higher maternal education. Mother's BMI and smoking were the strongest predictors of sons' overweight and obesity and essentially accounted for the variation in son's overweight by maternal education. The association of size at birth with later overweight was present only in sons born to mothers who were nonsmokers (odds ratio per 1 standard deviation weight for gestational age z-score 1.46, 95% CI 1.18–1.81) and became substantially reduced on adjustment for mother's pre-pregnancy BMI. Length of gestation was not statistically significantly associated with BMI at age 18.

Conclusions:

Maternal overweight and maternal smoking were the strongest determinants of offspring overweight and its social patterning, and should be a priority for public health policies.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Rawya Mohsen and Bitte Modin for help with preparation of the data set, to Bianca De Stavola for advice on statistical analysis and to Chris Power and Orly Manor for comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. The UBCoS Multigen study is supported by grants from the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research and the Swedish Research Council. IK is currently funded by the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research. The funders were not involved in the study design or execution, and the views and conclusions expressed in this manuscript are the responsibility of the authors.

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Koupil, I., Toivanen, P. Social and early-life determinants of overweight and obesity in 18-year-old Swedish men. Int J Obes 32, 73–81 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.ijo.0803681

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