Adolescents who had a low birth weight were more likely to have prediabetes than those with a normal or high birth weight — especially among males — according to a new study published in the journal Clinical Obesity.
The latest study is part of a growing body of research on the lasting effects that early human development — including during pregnancy — can have on metabolic health. As noted in a Healio article on the study, previous research has shown that either a low or high birth weight may raise the risk for type 2 diabetes in children and adolescents — findings that have been seen in diverse populations including Taiwanese, Native Canadian, and Pima Indian children. But less research has focused on whether the metabolic effects of high or low birth weight also include a higher risk for prediabetes — impaired glucose tolerance that isn’t severe enough for a diagnosis of diabetes. Since prediabetes is estimated to affect as many as 20% of adolescents in the United States, any link to birth weight could have potentially enormous implications for prediabetes screening and treatment.
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The researchers used data from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) between 2005 and 2016, which included 1,396 adolescents ages 12 to 15 at the time of the survey who didn’t have diabetes. The researchers were interested in looking at links between birth weight, prediabetes, sex, and body-mass index (a measure of body weight that takes height into account). Participants were grouped into three different categories of birth weight, with 133 adolescents having a low birth weight below 2,500 grams (5.5 pounds), 1,117 having a normal birth weight of 2,500-4,000 grams (5.5-8.8 pounds), and 146 having a high birth weight greater than 4,000 grams (8.8 pounds).
Low birth weight tied to increased prediabetes risk in males
The researchers found that compared with adolescents who had a normal birth weight, those with a low birth weight were 1.93 times as likely to have prediabetes. But this relationship wasn’t constant between males and females, or across different BMI categories. Among male adolescents, the risk for prediabetes was 2.40 times as high in those with a low birth weight, while among female adolescents, having a low birth weight didn’t significantly raise the risk for prediabetes. Among adolescents with a low birth weight, those who were overweight or obese were 2.13 times as likely to have prediabetes as those who had a lower BMI. But BMI wasn’t significantly linked to the risk for prediabetes in adolescents with a normal or high birth weight — demonstrating that being overweight or obese, by itself, might not be the best way to decide who should be screened for prediabetes in adolescence.
The researchers concluded that they found “evidence that glucose metabolism abnormalities in [low-birth-weight] individuals with obesity could occur even during childhood, thereby suggesting the need for early-life interventions.” But more research would be needed for birth weight to be incorporated into any official screening recommendations for prediabetes — and even then, the authors of guidelines would need to decide whether information on birth weight is accessible enough to be used in such a way.
Want to learn more about prediabetes? Read “What Is Prediabetes: Symptoms, Treatments, and More,” “Prediabetes Treatment” and “Diabetes Prevention: Eat to Beat Diabetes.”
