OBJECTIVE Fathers of low-birth weight offspring are more likely to have type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease in later life. We investigated whether paternal insulin resistance and cardiovascular risk factors were evident at the time that fetal growth-restricted offspring were born. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We carried out a case-control study of men who fathered pregnancies affected b...

The low ratio of second-to-fourth digit length (2D:4D) of parents, a putative indicator of high prenatal and even adult testosterone levels, has been suggested to predict a male-biased secondary offspring sex ratio. We investigated this question in 244 contemporary postreproductive Finnish women. Information on the lifetime offspring birth sex ratio of women was collected by questionnaires and ...

Conditional adjustment of cooperativeness to the expected pay-off might be a useful strategy to avoid being exploited in public good situations. Parental care provided towards all offspring in a communal nest (containing offspring of several females) resembles a public good. Females indiscriminately caring for all young share the costs equally, but the pay-off may vary depending on their contri...

BACKGROUND Maternal obesity and hyperglycemia increase risk of obesity and diabetes in offspring later in life. OBJECTIVE We examined the relation between gestational glycemia and prepregnancy body mass index (ppBMI) with offspring growth in an Asian mother-offspring cohort. DESIGN Pregnant mothers undertook a 75-g 2-h oral-glucose-tolerance test at 26-28 wk of gestation. In 937 singleton o...

The authors examined the effects of maternal intrauterine undernutrition on offspring birth weights in a cohort of women born between August 1944 and April 1946 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. This period included the Dutch Hunger Winter, a war-induced famine. Undernutrition was defined separately for each trimester of pregnancy as an average supply of less than 1,000 calories per day from gover...

When females mate with multiple males, paternal care is generally expected to be negligible, because it may be difficult or impossible for males to discriminate their own offspring from those of other males, and because engaging in paternal care may reduce male mating opportunities. Consequently, males in multimale societies are not predicted to provide direct benefits to their offspring. We ha...

BACKGROUND At high latitudes the external environment varies with season, and therefore the season of birth may contribute to the developmental processes during the perinatal period. METHODS We investigated the association between birth season and measures of reproductive performance (offspring count, percentage childless individuals) in a contemporary sample of women and men. RESULTS In th...

OBJECTIVE Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) influences fetal development and offspring's metabolic risk. We evaluated this association in 17-year-old offspring adjusting for birth weight (BW) and prepregnancy maternal BMI (mBMI). STUDY DESIGN The JPS birth cohort contains extensive data on 92,408 births from 1964 to 1976. Offspring's BMI and blood pressure (BP) were obtained from military r...

OBJECTIVES Through comprehensive ophthalmic examination of adult offspring we sought to determine the impact of multiple prenatal ultrasound scans on ocular development. METHODS 2743 pregnant women recruited to the Western Australian Pregnancy (Raine) Cohort study during 1989-1991 were randomized to receive at King Edward Memorial Hospital, Western Australia either multiple prenatal ultrasoun...