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Association Between Early Life Weight Gain and Abdominal Fat Partitioning at 4.5 Years is Sex, Ethnicity, and Age Dependent
Author(s) -
Sadananthan Suresh Anand,
Tint Mya Thway,
Michael Navin,
Aris Izzuddin M.,
Loy See Ling,
Lee Kuan Jin,
Shek Lynette PeiChi,
Yap Fabian Kok Peng,
Tan Kok Hian,
Godfrey Keith M.,
Leow Melvin KheeShing,
Lee Yung Seng,
Kramer Michael S.,
Gluckman Peter D.,
Chong Yap Seng,
Karnani Neerja,
Henry Christiani Jeyakumar,
Fortier Marielle Valerie,
Velan S. Sendhil
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
obesity
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.438
H-Index - 199
eISSN - 1930-739X
pISSN - 1930-7381
DOI - 10.1002/oby.22408
Subject(s) - medicine , weight gain , demography , adipose tissue , ethnic group , obesity , malay , intra abdominal fat , cohort , body weight , visceral fat , sociology , anthropology , insulin resistance , linguistics , philosophy
Objective The aim of this study was to investigate the independent associations between age‐specific annual weight gain from birth to age 4 years and fat deposition in metabolically distinct compartments at age 4.5 years in a South Asian longitudinal birth cohort. Methods Volumetric abdominal magnetic resonance imaging with comprehensive segmentation of deep and superficial subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) and visceral adipose tissues (VAT) was performed in 316 children (150 boys and 166 girls in three ethnic groups; 158 Chinese, 94 Malay, and 64 Indian) aged 4.5 years. Associations between fat volumes and annual relative weight gain conditional on past growth were assessed overall and stratified by sex and ethnicity. Results Conditional relative weight gain had stronger associations with greater SAT and VAT at age 4.5 years in girls than boys and in Indians compared with Malay and Chinese. Overall, the magnitude of association was the largest during 2 to 3 years for SAT and 1 to 2 years for VAT. Despite similar body weight, Indian children and girls had the highest deep and superficial SAT volumes at age 4.5 years (all interactions P < 0.05). No significant sex or ethnic differences were observed in VAT. With increasing BMI, Indian children had the highest tendency to accumulate VAT, and girls accumulated more fat than boys in all depots (all interactions P < 0.001). Conclusions Indian ethnicity and female sex predisposed children to accumulate more fat in the VAT depot with increasing conditional relative weight gain in the second year of life. Thus, 1 to 2 years of age may be a critical window for interventions to reduce visceral fat accumulation.