Early Life Factors and Inter-Country Heterogeneity in BMI Growth Trajectories of European Children: The IDEFICS Study

• Published in: PloS one 2016, Vol.11 (2), p.e0149268-e0149268
• Main Authors: Börnhorst, Claudia, Siani, Alfonso, Russo, Paola, Kourides, Yannis, Sion, Isabelle, Molnár, Denés, Moreno, Luis A, Rodríguez, Gerardo, Ben-Shlomo, Yoav, Howe, Laura, Lissner, Lauren, Mehlig, Kirsten, Regber, Susann, Bammann, Karin, Foraita, Ronja, Ahrens, Wolfgang, Tilling, Kate
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Age; Age Factors; Alcohol use; Biology and Life Sciences; Birth; Body mass; Body Mass Index; Body weight gain; Breast feeding; Breastfeeding & lactation; Child; Child Development; Child, Preschool; childhood growth; Children; Children & youth; Childrens health; Confidence intervals; Diet; Epidemiology; Ethics; Europe - epidemiology; Exercise; Female; gestational weight-gain; Girls; Growth curves; Health Sciences; Humans; Hälsovetenskaper; Infant; Infant, Newborn; Lifestyles; Male; Medicine; Medicine and Health Sciences; mediterranean; Nutrition research; Obesity; Obesity - epidemiology; Parents; People and Places; Physical fitness; physical-activity; Population genetics; postnatal factors; Pregnancy; pregnancy-related events; Prevention; Public health; Risk Factors; Sampling methods; Smoking; socioeconomic differences; Socioeconomic factors; Studies; Trajectories; Trends; Whites; young adulthood
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0149268

Starting from birth, this explorative study aimed to investigate between-country differences in body mass index (BMI) trajectories and whether early life factors explain these differences. The sample included 7,644 children from seven European countries (Belgium, Cyprus, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Sweden) participating in the multi-centre IDEFICS study. Information on early life factors and in total 53,409 repeated measurements of height and weight from 0 to