Dataset Information

Early life disadvantage and adult adiposity: tests of sensitive periods during childhood and behavioural mediation in adulthood.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Early exposure to socioeconomic disadvantage is associated with obesity. Here we investigated how early, and conducted mediation analyses to identify behavioural factors in adulthood that could explain why.

Methods

Among 931 participants in the New England Family Study, we investigated the associations of family socioeconomic disadvantage measured before birth and at age 7 years with the following measures of adiposity in mid-adulthood (mean age?=?44.4?years): body mass index (BMI), waist circumference and, among 400 participants, body composition from dual-energy X-ray absorption scans.

Results

In linear regressions adjusting for age, sex, race and childhood BMI Z-score, participants in the highest tertile of socioeconomic disadvantage at birth had 2.6 additional BMI units in adulthood [95% confidence interval (CI)?=?1.26, 3.96], 5.62 cm waist circumference (95% CI?=?2.69, 8.55), 0.73 kg of android fat mass (95% CI?=?0.25, 1.21), and 7.65 higher Fat Mass Index (95% CI?=?2.22, 13.09). Conditional on disadvantage at birth, socioeconomic disadvantage at age 7 years was not associated with adult adiposity. In mediation analyses, 10-20% of these associations were explained by educational attainment and 5-10% were explained by depressive symptoms.

Conclusions

Infancy may be a sensitive period for exposure to socioeconomic disadvantage, as exposure in the earliest years of life confers a larger risk for overall and central adiposity in mid-adulthood than exposure during childhood. Intervention on these two adult risk factors for adiposity would, if all model assumptions were satisfied, only remediate up to one-fifth of the excess adult adiposity among individuals born into socioeconomically disadvantaged households.

SUBMITTER: Gilman SE

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6380308 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Early life disadvantage and adult adiposity: tests of sensitive periods during childhood and behavioural mediation in adulthood.

Gilman Stephen E SE Huang Yen-Tsung YT Jimenez Marcia P MP Agha Golareh G Chu Su H SH Eaton Charles B CB Goldstein Risë B RB Kelsey Karl T KT Buka Stephen L SL Loucks Eric B EB

International journal of epidemiology 20190201 1

<h4>Background</h4>Early exposure to socioeconomic disadvantage is associated with obesity. Here we investigated how early, and conducted mediation analyses to identify behavioural factors in adulthood that could explain why.<h4>Methods</h4>Among 931 participants in the New England Family Study, we investigated the associations of family socioeconomic disadvantage measured before birth and at age 7 years with the following measures of adiposity in mid-adulthood (mean age = 44.4 years): body mass ...[more]

PMID: 30277525

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Project description:ImportanceDNA methylation has been proposed as an epigenetic mechanism by which the childhood neighborhood environment may have implications for the genome that compromise adult health.ObjectiveTo ascertain whether childhood neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage is associated with differences in DNA methylation by age 18 years.Design, setting, and participantsThis longitudinal cohort study analyzed data from the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study, a nationally representative birth cohort of children born between 1994 and 1995 in England and Wales and followed up from age 5 to 18 years. Data analysis was performed from March 15, 2019, to June 30, 2019.ExposuresHigh-resolution neighborhood data (indexing deprivation, dilapidation, disconnection, and dangerousness) collected across childhood.Main outcomes and measuresDNA methylation in whole blood was drawn at age 18 years. Associations between neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage and methylation were tested using 3 prespecified approaches: (1) testing probes annotated to candidate genes involved in biological responses to growing up in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods and investigated in previous epigenetic research (stress reactivity-related and inflammation-related genes), (2) polyepigenetic scores indexing differential methylation in phenotypes associated with growing up in disadvantaged neighborhoods (obesity, inflammation, and smoking), and (3) a theory-free epigenome-wide association study.ResultsA total of 1619 participants (806 female individuals [50%]) had complete neighborhood and DNA methylation data. Children raised in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods exhibited differential DNA methylation in genes involved in inflammation (β = 0.12; 95% CI, 0.06-0.19; P < .001) and smoking (β = 0.18; 95% CI, 0.11-0.25; P < .001) but not obesity (β = 0.05; 95% CI, -0.01 to 0.11; P = .12). An epigenome-wide association study identified multiple CpG sites at an arraywide significance level of P < 1.16 × 10-7 in genes involved in the metabolism of hydrocarbons. Associations between neighborhood disadvantage and methylation were small but robust to family-level socioeconomic factors and to individual-level tobacco smoking.Conclusions and relevanceChildren raised in more socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods appeared to enter young adulthood epigenetically distinct from their less disadvantaged peers. This finding suggests that epigenetic regulation may be a mechanism by which the childhood neighborhood environment alters adult health.

Dataset Information

Early life disadvantage and adult adiposity: tests of sensitive periods during childhood and behavioural mediation in adulthood.

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusions

Publications

Early life disadvantage and adult adiposity: tests of sensitive periods during childhood and behavioural mediation in adulthood.

Similar Datasets

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