Abstract
ObjectiveTo examine associations between maternal height and child growth during 4 developmental periods: intrauterine, birth to age 2 years, age 2 years to mid-childhood (MC), and MC to adulthood.Study designPooled analysis of maternal height and offspring growth using 7630 mother–child pairs from 5 birth cohorts (Brazil, Guatemala, India, the Philippines, and South Africa). We used conditional height measures that control for collinearity in height across periods. We estimated associations between maternal height and offspring growth using multivariate regression models adjusted for household income, child sex, birth order, and study site.ResultsMaternal height was associated with birth weight and with both height and conditional height at each age examined. The strongest associations with conditional heights were for adulthood and 2 years of age. A 1-cm increase in maternal height predicted a 0.024 (95% CI: 0.021-0.028) SD increase in offspring birth weight, a 0.037 (95% CI: 0.033-0.040) SD increase in conditional height at 2 years, a 0.025 (95% CI: 0.021-0.029 SD increase in conditional height in MC, and a 0.044 (95% CI: 0.040-0.048) SD increase in conditional height in adulthood. Short mothers (<150.1 cm) were more likely to have a child who was stunted at 2 years (prevalence ratio = 3.20 (95% CI: 2.80-3.60) and as an adult (prevalence ratio = 4.74, (95% CI: 4.13-5.44). There was no evidence of heterogeneity by site or sex.ConclusionMaternal height influences offspring linear growth over the growing period. These influences likely include genetic and non-genetic factors, including nutrition-related intergenerational influences on growth that prevent the attainment of genetic height potential in low- and middle-income countries.
Highlights
MethodsWe analyzed data from the 5 studies that participate in the Consortium on Health Orientated Research in Transitional Societies (COHORTS).[16]
Adult height is the cumulative result of the interaction between environment and genetics over the growing period
Short maternal height is associated with low offspring birth size, childhood stunting, and reduced human capital,[5,6,7,8] likely in part due to maternal physical constraints on offspring growth in utero.[9]
Summary
We analyzed data from the 5 studies that participate in the Consortium on Health Orientated Research in Transitional Societies (COHORTS).[16]. The MD point varied across sites because of variation in data collection schedules across the 5 cohorts. It was 48 months in Brazil, Guatemala, and India, 60 months in South Africa, and 102 months in the Philippines. In South Africa, it was obtained from birth records assessed for reliability.[23] Offspring attained height-for-age z-scores (HAZ) at age 2, at MC, and in adulthood were calculated using the 2006/7 World Health Organization standard reference curves.[24,25] To compute the adult HAZ we used the tabulated Lambda, Mu, Sigma (the child growth modeling method/parameters for the World Health Organization curves) values for age 19 years, under the assumption that adult height is substantively attained by this age
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