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IGF‐I in cord blood is predictive of final height in monozygotic twins with intra‐twin birth weight differences
Author(s) -
Kasner Charlotte,
Schulte Sandra,
Schreiner Felix,
Fimmers Rolf,
StoffelWagner Birgit,
Bartmann Peter,
Woelfle Joachim,
Gohlke Bettina
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
clinical endocrinology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.055
H-Index - 147
eISSN - 1365-2265
pISSN - 0300-0664
DOI - 10.1111/cen.14221
Subject(s) - cord blood , monozygotic twin , birth weight , cord , twin study , medicine , fetus , endocrinology , zoology , biology , pregnancy , genetics , surgery , heritability
Objective Adverse prenatal conditions can exert a long‐lasting impact on growth up to final height (FH). Due to different prenatal nutrient availability, monozygotic twin pairs with discordant birth weight (bw) provide an excellent model to examine the impact of genes and environment and to analyse the predictive value of bw, birth length (bl) and cord blood (cb) concentration of IGF‐I on FH. Patients and Methods Twenty eight monozygotic twin pairs with intra‐twin bw‐/bl‐differences were studied at birth and longitudinally until FH. Intra‐twin bw difference >1 SDS was defined “discordant” (n = 10 pairs). IGF‐I was analysed in cord blood in all twins. Intra‐twin differences (∆) in bw, bl and cord blood IGF‐I were correlated with ∆FH. Results Throughout growth and up until FH intra‐twin length/height differences remained for all but two (26/28) twins and for all (10/10) discordant twins. In the discordant group, a highly significant intra‐twin difference for FH‐SDS was found with a mean intra‐twin Δheight‐ SDS of 1.23 (range, 0.29‐2.34). This corresponds to a mean Δintra‐twin difference at FH of 7.9 cm (3.1 inch; range, 2‐15 cm [0.79‐5.9 inch]). Correlation coefficients were calculated to identify factors predicting FH: ∆bw ( r = .678; P = .0005), ∆bl ( r = .333; P = .0002) and ∆IGF‐I in cb ( r = .418; P = .0023). Interaction terms showed that IGF‐I is an additional factor to the auxological data, leading to an improvement of the ∆FH modelling. Conclusion Prenatal environment leading to bw‐/bl‐ and cbIGF‐I differences in monozygotic twins had a long‐lasting impact on growth until FH. Both, anthropometric data at birth and cbIGF‐I are predictive of FH.