TY - JOUR
T1 - Early individual and family predictors of weight trajectories from early childhood to adolescence
T2 - results from the Millennium Cohort Study
AU - Santos, Constança Soares dos
AU - Picoito, João
AU - Nunes, Carla
AU - Loureiro, Isabel
PY - 2020/8/11
Y1 - 2020/8/11
N2 - Background: Early infancy and childhood are critical periods in the establishment of lifelong weight trajectories. Parents and early family environment have a strong effect on children's health behaviors that track into adolescence, influencing lifelong risk of obesity. Objective: We aimed to identify developmental trajectories of body mass index (BMI) from early childhood to adolescence and to assess their early individual and family predictors. Methods: This was a secondary analysis of the Millennium Cohort Study and included 17,165 children. Weight trajectories were estimated using growth mixture modeling based on age- and gender-specific BMI Z-scores, followed by a bias-adjusted regression analysis. Results: We found four BMI trajectories: Weight Loss (69%), Early Weight Gain (24%), Early Obesity (3.7%), and Late Weight Gain (3.3%). Weight trajectories were mainly settled by early adolescence. Lack of sleep and eating routines, low emotional self-regulation, child-parent conflict, and low child-parent closeness in early childhood were significantly associated with unhealthy weight trajectories, alongside poverty, low maternal education, maternal obesity, and prematurity. Conclusions: Unhealthy BMI trajectories were defined in early and middle-childhood, and disproportionally affected children from disadvantaged families. This study further points out that household routines, self-regulation, and child-parent relationship are possible areas for family-based obesity prevention interventions.
AB - Background: Early infancy and childhood are critical periods in the establishment of lifelong weight trajectories. Parents and early family environment have a strong effect on children's health behaviors that track into adolescence, influencing lifelong risk of obesity. Objective: We aimed to identify developmental trajectories of body mass index (BMI) from early childhood to adolescence and to assess their early individual and family predictors. Methods: This was a secondary analysis of the Millennium Cohort Study and included 17,165 children. Weight trajectories were estimated using growth mixture modeling based on age- and gender-specific BMI Z-scores, followed by a bias-adjusted regression analysis. Results: We found four BMI trajectories: Weight Loss (69%), Early Weight Gain (24%), Early Obesity (3.7%), and Late Weight Gain (3.3%). Weight trajectories were mainly settled by early adolescence. Lack of sleep and eating routines, low emotional self-regulation, child-parent conflict, and low child-parent closeness in early childhood were significantly associated with unhealthy weight trajectories, alongside poverty, low maternal education, maternal obesity, and prematurity. Conclusions: Unhealthy BMI trajectories were defined in early and middle-childhood, and disproportionally affected children from disadvantaged families. This study further points out that household routines, self-regulation, and child-parent relationship are possible areas for family-based obesity prevention interventions.
KW - early childhood
KW - family context
KW - growth mixture modeling
KW - Millennium Cohort Study
KW - weight trajectories
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85089887011&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3389/fped.2020.00417
DO - 10.3389/fped.2020.00417
M3 - Article
C2 - 32850533
AN - SCOPUS:85089887011
SN - 2296-2360
VL - 8
JO - Frontiers in Pediatrics
JF - Frontiers in Pediatrics
M1 - 417
ER -