BBC News Online
London, UK
24 April, 2007



Mother's puberty 'obesity clue'

The age at which a woman had her first period can help predict her children's risk of obesity, say UK researchers.

A study of 6,000 children found those born to mothers with an early puberty were more likely to grow rapidly as babies and be overweight as children.

This faster growth pattern is also linked to obesity in adulthood.

The findings could help identify children at risk of weight problems early on, the Public Library of Science Medicine (PLOS) report concludes.

It is already known that age at which a girl has her first period - or reaches "menarche" - is largely inherited.

And women who start their periods early are at increased risk of obesity in later life, and are likely to be overweight even before puberty.

In the latest study, mothers who began their periods before age 11 were five times more likely to be obese than mothers who had their first period after the age of 15.

Children of mothers who had early first periods were taller by the age of nine and weighed more. Girls were also more likely to start their periods before the age of 11.

Those whose mothers had their first period under the age of 11 were three times more likely to be obese than those who started their periods after the age of 15.

The researchers also looked in more detail at growth measurements from birth to nine years in 900 children, and found that mothers' age at first period was associated with faster growth in weight and height in children up until the age of two years.

Children who have a fast growth pattern tend to start puberty earlier, but stop growing sooner - so they may not be particularly tall as adults.

Lifelong pattern

Lead researcher Dr Ken Ong, paediatric endocrinologist at the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit at Cambridge University, said it was now clear that this growth pattern starts at birth.

"Beyond links to early puberty, most importantly this growth pattern appears to lead to an increased risk of obesity that lasts from childhood through to adult life."

He added there could be a genetic link - perhaps related to appetite - or that the findings may be explained by feeding behaviours or patterns that run in families.

"Knowing that rapid infancy weight gain, early puberty and obesity run together in families may help us identify which children to best target our efforts at right from birth."

He added that parents should be encouraged to breastfeed rather than bottle-feed.

The team are also beginning a study to look at trying to avoid excessive calorie consumption in babies who are formula fed.

Dr Tabitha Randell, consultant paediatric endocrinologist at University Hospital Nottingham, said the big point was that heavier mothers had heavier children.

"Age at menarche is strongly related to your weight and it's well recognised that it's getting earlier and earlier."

But she said that environmental factors were just as important as genetics.

"It would be very interesting to have a look at the effect of breastfeeding.

"It sets up feeding patterns. You lay down your number of fat cells in the first couple of years of life," she said.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6583485.stm

Mother's early puberty boosts child's obesity risk

01:00 24 April 2007
NewScientist.com news service


The age at which a girl first starts menstruating affects the health of her future children, a new study suggests.

Children whose mothers first menstruated at age 11 were twice as likely to be obese compared to those whose mothers reached menarche (first menstruation) at age 15. The findings should encourage women who experienced early puberty to monitor weight gain more closely in their sons and daughters, the researchers say.

Ken Ong at the University of Cambridge in the UK and colleagues reviewed a decade's worth of health information collected from 6000 children born in the early-1990s. The mothers involved in the study also provided details about their own health, including the age at which their periods started and how much they weighed before becoming pregnant.

Children whose mothers underwent early puberty also appeared to undergo early growth spurts. For example, at age 9, youngsters born to women who started menstruating at age 11 were on average around 1.5 kilograms heavier and 1 centimetre taller than those born to women who started their periods at age 13.

Weight worries

Ong worries that the children who experience early growth spurts face a higher risk of poor health later in life. He says numerous studies have found that girls who go through early puberty are more likely to be overweight in adulthood.

And his team found that by age nine, 15% of the children whose mothers had begun menstruation at age 11 were already clinically obese. By comparison, only 4% of the children whose mothers started their periods at age 15 were obese.

After controlling for factors, such as the mothers' own weight, researchers found that children were twice as likely to be obese if their mothers started her periods at age 11 instead of age 15.

In the genes?

Ong believes that a combination of genetic and behavioural factors explains why women who undergo puberty early appear to have children who grow faster and weigh more.

Mothers may pass on genes that cause swift development, he explains. By the same token, they may pass on eating habits that prime the body for early maturation. Previous research has shown that childhood obesity brings early puberty for girls.

Ong says his findings should make women who went through early puberty particularly vigilant about their children's weight.

Early growth spurts can cause psychosocial problems for youngsters, notes puberty expert Marcia Herman-Giddens at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, US, who was not involved in the study. She says, for example, that girls who undergo puberty at age 9 may receive sexual advances from older boys or men.

Joyce Lee at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, US, says the results are relevant to public health because the age of puberty onset continues to fall. In the mid-18th century, European girls typically began menstruating at age 17. The average age is now 13.

Journal reference: PLoS Medicine (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0040132)


http://www.newscientist.com/article...esity-risk.html

Typical, it's always the mother's fault.

That is a interresting thanks for posting it

I just want to chime in here to say this ISN'T true of me/us. I didn't have a period until 14, was thin as a rail. My youngest daughter is a little overweight, but she is also tall for her age and has ALWAYS been big for her age, eg tall. She's always been in the shadowed area. I did have her after I had been put on steroids though. She was tall and thin until, school. Maybe school lunches? To be honest, I can't blame it all there. We do eat out a lot. I think her situation snuck up on me as when I was a kid, I could eat anything and not gain weight.

Wow, thanks for sharing the article!

I read a study some years ago from New Zealand where they found females without strong father figures in their lives physically hit puberty earlier than other girls (they didn't study boys). Maybe this is a link between how our recently changed culture really does physically pre-dispose people to obesity???

... call all that "fat gene" stuff just doesn't make sense on an evolutionary level lol ...

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bsheets, I read a similar study about boys...and it said pretty much the same thing that you mentioned about girls...the boys without a biological father around hit puberty much earlier.

The reason they gave was because of "Pheremones" and I guess basically back in primitive times, if a boy didn't have his father around to protect him, he had to grow up faster. In the study, only the biological father gave off the correct pheremones to encourage puberty to wait until the optimal time.

Wish I could give references, but it's been a few years. I just had thought that it was so interesting, and that's why I remembered it.

Hmmm... I was reading about LOS last night in my genetics book. It stands for Large Offspring Syndrome. Apparently it causes much more rapid development of fetuses, they get very big. It seems to hit babies more often that have had their cells mucked with, like for IVF babies where they take a cell away from the cluster and screen it. Perhaps it doesn't stop at deliver? Perhaps it could account for premature puberty and some obesity?