Diabetes And Low Birth Weight: Is There A Link?

New findings published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) reveal that low birth weight may be linked to an increased risk of type 2 diabetes.

"Most cases of type 2 diabetes could be prevented by the adoption of a healthier lifestyle, but these findings suggest that efforts focused on early life development, such as improving nutrition for pregnant women, could prevent additional cases," said senior study author Lu Qi, associate professor in the Department of Nutrition at Harvard Chan School and Channing Division of Network Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, in a news release.

Researchers at Harvard University discovered that people who have a low birth weight are more likely to have unhealthy habits as adults, including poor diets and increased risk of smoking--all which could increase the risk of type 2 diabetes.

For this particular study, researchers analyzed health data from about 150,000 men and women who were tracked by three large ongoing trials for 20 to 30 years. Participants were scored based on five lifestyle factors, including alcohol consumption, diet, smoking, body mass index (BMI) and physical activity.

Of 11,709 new cases of type 2 diabetes documented during the study, findings revealed that about 22 percent of the cases could be attributed to a lower birth weight, with another 59 percent to unhealthy lifestyle, alone. Eighteen percent was linked to the interaction between both factors.

"Our findings suggest that the public health consequences of unhealthy lifestyles would be larger in low birth weight populations," Yanping Li, lead author and research scientist in the Department of Nutrition, concluded. "This is of critical importance in the developing countries undergoing rapid epidemiologic transition from traditional to Western lifestyles, such as China and India, where the prevalence of the Western dietary pattern, cigarette smoking, sedentary activities, obesity, and diabetes has been increasing dramatically, and low birth weight is still highly prevalent."

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