OBJECTIVE To investigate the association between birth weight of offspring and mothers' insulin resistance in late adulthood. DESIGN Cross sectional survey. SETTING General practitioner's surgeries in 23 towns in Great Britain. PARTICIPANTS 4286 women aged 60-79 years. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Maternal insulin resistance. RESULTS Birth weight of offspring was inversely related to materna...

Telomere length shortens with aging, and short telomeres have been linked to a wide variety of pathologies. Previous studies suggested a discrepancy in age-associated telomere shortening rate estimated by cross-sectional studies versus the rate measured in longitudinal studies, indicating a potential bias in cross-sectional estimates. Intergenerational changes in initial telomere length, such a...

Objective(s) During recent years, there has been an increasing interest in contribution of environmental pollutants as heavy metals to human male infertility. Present study was aimed to investigate the effects of maternal lead acetate exposure during lactation on postnatal development of testis in offspring rats. Materials and Methods A total of 60 female rats randomly divided into four equa...

OBJECTIVE We evaluate the association between gestational weight gain and offspring birth weight in singleton term pregnancies of women with type 1 diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS One hundred fifteen consecutive women referred at <14 weeks were retrospectively classified as underweight (prepregnancy BMI <18.5 kg/m(2); n = 1), normal weight (18.5-24.9; n = 65), overweight (25.0-29.9; n =...

BACKGROUND Birth weight (BW) predicts many health outcomes, but the relative contributions of genes and environmental factors to BW remain uncertain. Some studies report stronger mother-offspring than father-offspring BW correlations, with attenuated father-offspring BW correlations when the mother is stunted. These findings have been interpreted as evidence that maternal genetic or environment...

Environmental conditions experienced in early life can influence an individual's growth and long-term health, and potentially also that of their offspring. However, such developmental effects on intergenerational outcomes have rarely been studied. Here we investigate intergenerational effects of early environment in humans using survey- and clinic-based data from rural Gambia, a population expe...

OBJECTIVES To compare epidemiological studies on Austrian and New Zealand women that report below average reproductive performance after birth in summer, with a similar study in Romanian women. METHODS We examined the association between birth month and offspring count analyzing census data from Romania obtained from IPUMS International (Population and Housing Census of Romania, year 2002), t...

AIMS We investigated pathways linking offspring birth weight to maternal diabetes risk in later life by taking into account a range of prospective early-life and adult maternal factors. METHODS In a national birth cohort study, we examined the relationship between offspring birth weight and maternal glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) at age 53 years in 581 mothers who had a first birth between age ...

Strong associations of adverse perinatal outcomes have been identified with later cardiovascular disease in the mother. Few studies have addressed associations with kidney disease. This study investigated whether perinatal outcomes are associated with later clinical kidney disease as diagnosed by kidney biopsy. The Medical Birth Registry of Norway contains data on all childbirths in Norway sinc...

Low birth weight is associated with reduced bone mass and density in adult life. However, effects of maternal hypoxia (MH) on offspring bone development are not known. Objective. The current study investigated the effects of fetal growth restriction induced by MH during the last half of gestation on bone structure and volume in the offspring of the fetus near term and the pup in adolescence. Me...