Abstract
Previous studies suggested that malnutrition during early life may play an essential role in later outcomes and disease risk in adulthood. We aimed to investigate the risks of hyperglycemia and diabetes 50 years after early-life famine exposure in a Northeastern Chinese population. We used the data from 5690 adults born between 1956 and 1965 in selected communities from a 2012 cross-sectional study. The early-childhood exposure cohort showed an increased risk of hyperglycemia compared with the unexposed cohort in the female population (odds ratio (OR) 1.46; 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.04, 2.06). The increased risk of diabetes in the early-childhood and fetal exposure cohorts was 37.0% (95% CI 1.05–1.79) and 50% (95% CI 1.15–1.96), respectively. For women, the risk of diabetes was more pronounced in the fetal-exposed cohort (OR 1.82; 95% CI 1.26–2.63) than in the early-childhood cohort (OR 1.57; 95% CI 1.08–2.26). Early-life exposure to famine increased the risk of diabetes. Furthermore, early-childhood exposure to famine might increase the risk of hyperglycemia in women. A policy for preventing early life malnutrition should be drafted by the government to prevent hyperglycemia and diabetes in adulthood.
Highlights
The thrifty phenotype hypothesis was postulated to explain the associations between poor fetal and infant condition and increased risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D) due to the influences of malnutrition in early life that leads to irreversible changes in glucose-insulin metabolism [1]
The proportions of smokers were different in the four groups, but alcohol consumption was found to be distributed among cohorts
The women who were exposed to famine in their early childhood had an increased susceptibility to hyperglycemia
Summary
The thrifty phenotype hypothesis was postulated to explain the associations between poor fetal and infant condition and increased risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D) due to the influences of malnutrition in early life that leads to irreversible changes in glucose-insulin metabolism [1]. A general approach used to validate this hypothesis in human beings involves assessing the influence of a natural disaster, such as a famine, especially when it is consistent with the gestation or early-childhood periods, so that the prevalence of disease in these subjects during adulthoods can be observed. The influence of early-life malnutrition on adulthood health has already been reported in different countries [6,7,8,9], and an increasing number of studies of Chinese populations have searched for the relationships between early-life exposure to famine and chronic diseases in later life.
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