Longitudinal associations of gross motor development, motor milestone achievement and weight-for-length z score in a racially diverse cohort of US infants

Abstract

ObjectivesTo investigate longitudinal associations between gross motor development, motor milestone achievement and weight-for-length z scores in a sample of infants. In a secondary aim, we explored potential bidirectional relationships, as higher weight-for-length z scores may impede motor development, and poor motor development may lead to obesity.DesignThe design was an observational birth cohort.SettingWe used data from the Nurture study, a birth cohort of predominately black women and their infants residing in the Southeastern USA.Participants666 women enrolled their infants in Nurture. We excluded infants with missing data on exposure, outcome or main covariates, leaving a total analytic sample of 425 infants.Primary outcomeThe outcome was weight-for-length z score, measured when infants were 3, 6, 9 12 months.ResultsAmong infants, 64.7% were black, 18.8% were white and 16.9% were other/multiple race. Mean (SD) breastfeeding duration was 17.6 (19.7) weeks. Just over one-third (38.5%) had an annual household income of < $20 000. After adjusting for potential confounders, higher motor development score was associated with lower weight-for-length z score (−0.004; 95% CI −0.001 to –0.007; p=0.01), mainly driven by associations among boys (−0.007; 95% CI −0.014 to –0.001; p=0.03) and not girls (0.001; 95% CI −0.005 to 0.008; p=0.62). Earlier crawling was the only milestone associated with a lower weight-for-length z score at 12 months (−0.328; 95% CI −0.585 to 0.072; p=0.012). However, this association appeared to be driven by male infants only (−0.461; 95% CI −0.825 to −0.096; p=0.01). Weight-for-length z score was unrelated to subsequent motor development score and was thus not bidirectional in our sample.ConclusionsHigher motor development score and earlier crawling were associated with lower subsequent weight-for-length z score. However, this was primary true for male infants only. These findings contribute to the growing body of evidence suggesting that delayed motor development may be associated with later obesity.

Achievement of Developmental Milestones Recorded in Real Time: A Mobile App-Based Study

“…For gross motor milestones, body mass index standard deviation score was adjusted as a covariate in the RMST analysis because it has been associated with achievement of gross motor milestones. 18 Statistical analyses were performed using 'survival' (https://cran.r-project.org/ web/packages/survival/) and 'survRM2' (https://cran.r-project.org/web/ packages/ survRM2/) packages under R version 4.0.2 (https://www.r-project.org/). Statistical significance was set at P < 0.05.…”

Household pesticide exposures and infant gross motor development in the MADRES cohort

“…Given that healthy infant development is linked with cognitive, social, language, and motor milestones, a disruption to any one of an infant's developmental domains can disrupt other developmental milestones. [44][45][46] Achievements in early motor developmental milestones can be predictive of later life outcomes including later childhood motor development, cognitive and social development, and metabolic health, [47][48][49][50] stressing the importance of understanding the potential neurotoxic effects of household pesticide use on infants' motor development. [51][52][53] Much of the literature on pesticide exposure and infant motor development has focused on assessing the effects of agricultural organophosphate and organochlorine pesticides.…”

Continued Breastfeeding and the Influence of Fatty Acids on Infant Neurological Maturation: a Systematic Review

“…The child, when breastfed, receives several stimuli during sucking that help in craniomyofacial evolution, such as tactilekinesthetic, olfactory, visual, auditory and motor. Such stimuli provide for the development of primary and mucoskeletal neurovegetative functions, and such functions are initiated during the embryofetal period [45][46][47] .…”