High Birth Weight Increases the Risk for Bone Tumor: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Abstract

There have been several epidemiologic studies on the relationship between high birth weight and the risk for bone tumor in the past decades. However, due to the rarity of bone tumors, the sample size of individual studies was generally too small for reliable conclusions. Therefore, we have performed a meta-analysis to pool all published data on electronic databases with the purpose to clarify the potential relationship. According to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 18 independent studies with more than 2796 cases were included. As a result, high birth weight was found to increase the risk for bone tumor with an Odds Ratio (OR) of 1.13, with the 95% confidence interval (95% CI) ranging from 1.01 to 1.27. The OR of bone tumor for an increase of 500 gram of birth weight was 1.01 (95% CI 1.00–1.02; p = 0.048 for linear trend). Interestingly, individuals with high birth weight had a greater risk for osteosarcoma (OR = 1.22, 95% CI 1.06–1.40, p = 0.006) than those with normal birth weight. In addition, in the subgroup analysis by geographical region, elevated risk was detected among Europeans (OR = 1.14, 95% CI 1.00–1.29, p = 0.049). The present meta-analysis supported a positive association between high birth weight and bone tumor risk.

Causal Association Between Birth Weight and Adult Diseases: Evidence From a Mendelian Randomization Analysis

“…In addition, recent studies have also revealed positive associations between birth weight and various types of cancers. Exemplary birth weight-associated cancers include renal cell cancer (Bergstrom et al, 2001), colorectal cancer (Sandhu et al, 2002), primary central nervous system tumor (Georgakis et al, 2017), prostate cancer (Zhou et al, 2016), bone tumor (Chen et al, 2015), and breast cancer (Xu et al, 2009). However, it remains unclear whether the identified associations between birth weight and the aforementioned adult diseases represent truly causal relationship, or are merely spurious associations caused by common confounding factors that occur during prenatal life (Barker, 1990; Leon, 1998; Law, 2002; Ruiz-Narvaez et al, 2014; Kahn et al, 2017) or confounding due to pleiotropy and shared genetic components (Lawlor et al, 2017).…”

Perinatal factors associated with clinical presentation of osteosarcoma in children and adolescents

“…Birthweight is an additional factor undergoing investigation in epidemiologic studies of osteosarcoma . Higher birthweight is indicative of increased fetal growth in utero , and potentially, greater exposure to insulin‐like growth factors (IGFs).…”

“…2,[12][13][14][15] Birthweight is an additional factor undergoing investigation in epidemiologic studies of osteosarcoma. 2,6,16 Higher birthweight is indicative of increased fetal growth in utero, and potentially, greater exposure to insulin-like growth factors (IGFs). High birthweight has previously been linked to increased risk of a variety of childhood cancers including acute lymphoblastic leukemia, Wilm's tumor, neuroblastoma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, soft tissue sarcomas, and germ cell tumors.…”

The mediating effect of allostatic load on the relationship between neighborhood perceptions and depression

“…To assess the potentialfor unmeasured confounding, a leave-one-out sensitivity analysis was completed ( Chen et al, 2015 ; Hernán & Robins, 2020 ; Noyce et al, 2017 ; Zeng, Yu, & Xu, 2019 ). This analysis was employed to determine the degree of potential confounding added to the analysis by removing—and no longer controlling for—each of the covariates.…”