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European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2012) 66, 964 -- 967 & 2012 Macmillan Publishers Limited All rights reserved 0954-3007/12
http://www.nature.com/
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SHORT COMMUNICATION
Can birth weight predict later body composition in anorexia nervosa?
L Mattar1,2,3, C Pichard4, N Godart1,2,3, J-C Melchior5,6 and EVAN group7
BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: The relationship between birth weight and body composition at later stages in life was not studied previously in anorexia nervosa (AN). The aim of the following brief report is to present results concerning the relationship between birth weight and later body composition specically in AN, and to check if the programming of body composition from birth weight is still detected in severely emaciated AN patients.
SUBJECTS/METHODS: One hundred and fty-one female AN patients aged between 13 and 44 were recruited from 11 inpatient treatment facilities in France. Birth weight, body weight and height were obtained. Body composition was measured using bioelectrical impedance. Birth weight was signicantly correlated to lifetime maximum body mass index (BMI; r 0.211,
P 0.009) and signicantly correlated to fat-free mass index (r 0.190, P 0.027) but not to fat mass index (FMI).
RESULTS: This report conrms that even in AN when patients are severely emaciated and where fat-free mass (FFM) and fat mass (FM) are low, a link between birth weight and FFM and BMI can still be identied, independently from age. CONCLUSION: Further studies are needed on larger samples exploring other factors, such as gender, puberty and ethnicity.
European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2012) 66, 964--967; doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ejcn.2012.21
Web End =10.1038/ejcn.2012.21 ; published online 29 February 2012
Keywords: anorexia nervosa; birth weight; fat mass; fat-free mass; body mass index body composition
INTRODUCTIONSeveral studies investigated the link between birth weight and body composition components (fat mass (FM) and fat-free mass (FFM)) in early adolescence and adulthood in the context of predicting obesity and cardiovascular risk in adulthood.1 -- 7 In fact,
there is a large corpus of literature on the relationships between birth weight and body composition at later stages in life, and on birth weight being one of the perinatal predictors of body composition, predicting obesity and cardiovascular disease in childhood or early adulthood.1 -- 7 Singhal et al.6 showed that heavier birth weight was associated with greater FFM, but not with greater FM,...