Association Of Adult Height Research Articles

Association of Adult Height with Cardiovascular Mortality: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Cohort Studies.

Epidemiological studies on the association between adult height and cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality have provided conflicting findings. We examined the association between adult height and the risk of CVD mortality. We searched PubMed, Scopus, ISI Web of Knowledge, and Google Scholar for relevant studies published up to September 2021. Prospective cohort studies that reported the risk estimates for death from CVD, coronary heart disease (CHD), and stroke were included. The random-effects model was used to calculate summary relative risks (RRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for the highest vs. lowest categories of adult height. In total, 20 prospective cohort publications were included in this systematic review and 17 in the meta-analysis. During 5 to 41 years of follow-up, the total number of deaths from CVD was 95,197 (51,608 from CHD and 20,319 from a stroke) among 2,676,070 participants. The summary RR comparing the highest and lowest categories of height was 0.80 (95% CI: 0.74-0.87, I 2 = 59.4%, n = 15 studies) for CVD mortality, 0.82 (95% CI: 0.74-0.90, I 2 = 70.6%, n = 12) for CHD mortality, 0.73 (95% CI: 0.67-0.80, I 2 = 0%, n = 10) for stroke mortality, 0.70 (95% CI: 0.61-0.81, I 2 = 0%, n = 4) for hemorrhagic stroke mortality, and 0.88 (95% CI: 0.72-1.08, I 2 = 0%, n = 4) for ischemic stroke mortality. The present comprehensive meta-analysis provides evidence for an inverse association between adult height and the risk of CVD, CHD, and stroke mortality.

Relationship of genetic determinants of height with cardiometabolic and pulmonary traits in the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos

Associations of adult height with cardiometabolic and pulmonary traits have been studied in majority European ancestry populations using Mendelian randomization and polygenic risk score (PRS) analysis. The standard PRS approach entails creating a PRS for height using variants identified in prior genome-wide association studies (GWAS). It is unclear how well the standard PRS approach performs in non-European populations and whether height-trait associations observed in Europeans are also observed in other populations. In the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos (HCHS/SOL), we used: (i) the standard approach to create a PRS for height (PRS1) and (ii) a novel approach to optimize the selection of variants from previously established height association loci to better explain height in HCHS/SOL (PRS2). We also estimated the extent to which PRS-trait associations were independent or mediated by the PRS effect on height. In 7539 women and 5245 men, PRS1 and PRS2 explained 9 and 29% of the variance in measured height, respectively. Both PRS1 and PRS2 were associated with forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1), forced vital capacity (FVC), FEV1/ FVC ratio, total cholesterol and 2-hour oral glucose-tolerance test insulin levels. Additionally, PRS2 was associated with estimated glomerular filtration rate and ankle brachial index. Both PRS1 and PRS2 had pleiotropic associations with FEV1/ FVC ratio in mediation analyses. Associations of polygenic scores of height with measures of lung function and cholesterol were consistent with those observed in prior studies of majority European ancestry populations. Mediation analysis may augment standard PRS approaches to disentangle pleiotropic and mediated effects.

The association of adult height with the risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer in the population of Sardinia.

The relationship between body height and the risk of non‒communicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease and cancer has been the subject of much debate in the epidemiological literature. Concerns have recently arisen over spurious associations due to confounding factors like birth cohort, especially in the context of epidemiological transition. The population of Sardinia represents an interesting case study, as the average physical stature of inhabitants was the lowest recorded in Europe until a few decades ago. In this population we tested whether height is an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease and cancer. We analysed the stature of 10,427 patients undergoing endoscopy for any reason, for whom a detailed clinical history of cardiovascular disease and/or malignancies had been documented. Poisson regression modelling was used to test the association between stature and disease risk. When patients were subdivided according to sex and height tertiles, the risk of cardiovascular disease proved significantly greater for subjects in the lowest tertile irrespective of sex (men: 1.87; 95%CI 1.41‒2.47; women: 1.23; 95%CI 0.92‒1.66) and smaller for those in the highest tertile (men: 0.51; 95%CI 0.35‒0.75; women: 0.41; 95%CI 0.27‒0.61). However, after adjusting the risk for birth cohort and established risk factors, it mostly resulted in non-significant values, although the overall trend persisted. Similar results were obtained for all-cancer risk (relative risk for men and women in the lowest tertile: 1.44; 95%CI 1.09–1.90 and 1.17; 95%CI 0.93–1.48, in the highest tertile: 0.51; 95%CI 0.36–0.72 and 0.62; 95%CI 0.47–0.81, respectively) as well as for some of the most common types of cancer. We concluded that the risk of developing cardiovascular disease and malignancies does not vary significantly with stature in the Sardinian population, after adjusting for birth cohort and more obvious risk factors.

Height and Risk of Adult Cancers: a Review

Recent prospective studies have revealed modest positive associations of adult height with risk of all cancers as well as risk of cancers at most anatomical sites, including cancers of the colon, rectum, liver, skin melanoma, breast, corpus uteri, ovary, prostate, kidney, central nervous system, thyroid, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, multiple myeloma and leukaemia. These associations, which do not appear to be explained by bias or confounding, highlight the importance of early life exposures in the aetiology of cancer. The mechanisms underlying the height-cancer associations are not known but height may act as a surrogate for genetic and other biological processes or as a proxy for environmental factors associated with risk, with the latter acting at, or accumulating through, different stages of life (i.e. prenatal period to adolescence). Clarification of these mechanisms will be challenging, but it will provide additional insights about the pathogenesis of cancer and possibly also novel avenues for prevention.

Association of adult height and leg length with fasting plasma cortisol concentrations: Evidence for an effect of normal variation in adrenocortical activity on growth

We have evaluated the relationship between activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and adult height in adults recruited from the UK Hertfordshire Cohort Study. In a sample of 1,354 individuals, we found that height fell by 0.67 cm (95% CI 0.34-1.0) per SD (114 nmol/l) increase in fasting plasma cortisol concentrations. The association was continuous across the range of cortisol concentrations and was independent of the levels of corticosteroid binding globulin. It was of similar magnitude in men and women. In a subsample of the study available data on standing and sitting height was used to estimate trunk and leg length. Fasting plasma cortisol concentrations were found to have a much greater impact on leg length than trunk length. These findings suggest that physiological variations in adrenocortical glucocorticoid secretion in humans affect adult height. They also raise the possibility that the HPA axis may be involved in mediating resource allocation decisions and trade-offs during development perhaps by limiting physical growth to enable other competing processes.

Relation of childhood height and later risk of breast cancer.

The authors sought to examine the hypothesis that girls who were relatively tall during the prepubescent period (indicative of an affluent diet and good general health) were at increased risk of subsequent breast cancer. They conducted a case-control study of 214 long-term members who were diagnosed with breast cancer during 1973-1995 and who were age 12 years or younger when they first joined Kaiser Permanente and of 214 appropriately matched controls. Information was obtained from the medical records. While the authors observed the expected association of adult height with risk of breast cancer (height at age 15-18 years, tall-for-age vs. short-for-age: odds ratio = 2.2, 95% confidence interval: 1.1, 4.3), the association was no stronger earlier in life (height at age 9-11 years: odds ratio = 1.0, 95% confidence interval: 0.5, 1.8). The study does not support a relation between pubertal skeletal growth and adult risk of breast cancer. However, it is limited by the inclusion of few postmenopausal women.