Congratulations to Professor Fionnuala McAuliffe, the team at UCD Perinatal Research Centre, and all involved, on their recently published paper focused on findings from the ROLO longitudinal birth cohort study. This research is titled, Childhood nutritional factors and cardiometabolic outcomes at 9-11 years of age.
AbstractChildhood represents a critical period of nutritional risk in the programming of later chronic disease. Few longitudinal studies have explored repeated measures of nutrition throughout the first decade of life in relation to preteen cardiometabolic outcomes.
This research aimed to explore associations of early feeding practices (human milk exposure and duration and timing of introduction to solids) and childhood dietary quality and inflammatory scores (at 5 and 9-11-years and change during childhood) on preteen cardiometabolic outcomes.
Secondary analysis of the ROLO longitudinal birth cohort study (n=399). Information on early feeding practices were obtained at postnatal study visits. Food frequency questionnaires collected maternal-reported dietary intakes for each child at 5 and 9-11-years of age. Healthy Eating Index-2015 (HEI-2015) and the Children’s Dietary Inflammatory Index (C-DII) scores were calculated. Anthropometry, body composition, blood pressure, heart rate, cardiorespiratory endurance, and blood biomarkers were obtained at 9-11-years. Crude and adjusted linear regression models examined nutritional exposure associations with preteen cardiometabolic outcomes.
In the adjusted model, any human milk exposure was associated with lower body fat (%) at 9-11-years (B=-2.86, 95% CI=-5.46, -0.27, p=0.03), compared to never receiving human milk. At 5-years, diet scores were favourably associated with lean mass at 9-11-years (p<0.05 for both). Higher preteen HEI-2015 scores were associated with lower leptin levels (Tertile 3 compared to Tertile 1, B=-2.92, 95% CI=-5.64, -0.21, p=0.03). Diet quality significantly deteriorated (HEI-2015 decreased) and became more pro-inflammatory (C-DII score increased) from 5 to 9-11-years of age. Diet quality/inflammation deterioration (compared to improvement) or overall change in dietary scores were not related to preteen cardiometabolic outcomes.
Exposure to human milk in early life was associated with lower preteen adiposity, irrespective of duration. Diet quality/inflammation deteriorated between early childhood and the preteen years, highlighting a potential period for intervention.
Read the full paper here.