Cardiometabolic Health in Adults Born Premature With Extremely Low Birth Weight

Abstract

By their fourth decade, these adults born extremely premature had increased body fat, lower lean mass, and a 4-fold increased risk of developing dysglycemia.

Vision in former very low birthweight young adults with and without retinopathy of prematurity compared with term born controls: the NZ 1986 VLBW follow-up study

“…There were two cases of retinal detachment occurring in our cohort at 16 years and we would recommend that adolescents and young adults who have had ROP are aware of this potential complication and remain under ophthalmology review 4 28. The Canadian study also recently reported that ROP was independently related to dysglycemia in young adulthood suggesting possible common pathogenic mechanisms 29. We have investigated cardiometabolic health in our cohort also, which will be reported separately.…”

Birthweight, Type 2 Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease: Addressing the Barker Hypothesis with Mendelian randomization

“…Both epidemiological and animal studies highlight that undernutrition, overnutrition, and inadequate diet composition negatively impact fetoplacental growth and metabolic patterns, potentially having adverse later life metabolic effects for the offspring 44 . Additionally, our data may also offer a window into the role by which non-nutritional factors affecting fetal growth such as congenital heart disease and premature birth, may predispose affected individuals to long-term risk of cardiometabolic disease in adulthood 45,46,47 .…”

Perinatal Origins of Adult Disease

“…Also, an increased risk of chronic heart failure has been recently identified in preterm-born subjects. In preterm-born adults entering their fourth decade, the rate of any form of altered glucose metabolism has been shown to reach 25-30% compared to less than 10% in control, term-born adults [26]. Taken together, the delayed effects of preterm birth, especially in very low gestational age and very low birth weight infants, are observed early and with higher magnitude compared to the long-term consequences of early nutritional and stress variations in the general population, unaffected by perinatal disorders [27].…”