Association Between Early Life Weight Gain and Abdominal Fat Partitioning at 4.5 Years is Sex, Ethnicity, and Age Dependent

Abstract

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the independent associations between age-specific annual weight gain from birth to age 4 years and fat deposition in metabolically distinct compartments at age 4.5 years in a South Asian longitudinal birth cohort.

Methods: Volumetric abdominal magnetic resonance imaging with comprehensive segmentation of deep and superficial subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) and visceral adipose tissues (VAT) was performed in 316 children (150 boys and 166 girls in three ethnic groups; 158 Chinese, 94 Malay, and 64 Indian) aged 4.5 years. Associations between fat volumes and annual relative weight gain conditional on past growth were assessed overall and stratified by sex and ethnicity.

Results: Conditional relative weight gain had stronger associations with greater SAT and VAT at age 4.5 years in girls than boys and in Indians compared with Malay and Chinese. Overall, the magnitude of association was the largest during 2 to 3 years for SAT and 1 to 2 years for VAT. Despite similar body weight, Indian children and girls had the highest deep and superficial SAT volumes at age 4.5 years (all interactions P < 0.05). No significant sex or ethnic differences were observed in VAT. With increasing BMI, Indian children had the highest tendency to accumulate VAT, and girls accumulated more fat than boys in all depots (all interactions P < 0.001).

Conclusions: Indian ethnicity and female sex predisposed children to accumulate more fat in the VAT depot with increasing conditional relative weight gain in the second year of life. Thus, 1 to 2 years of age may be a critical window for interventions to reduce visceral fat accumulation.

Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01174875.

Conflict of interest statement

Disclosure: Keith M. Godfrey has received reimbursement for speaking at conferences sponsored by companies selling nutritional products. Keith M. Godfrey and Peter D. Gluckman are part of an academic consortium that has received research funding Nestec. The other authors declared no conflicts of interest. Keith M. Godfrey is supported by the UK Medical Research Council (MC_UU_12011/4), the National Institute for Health Research (as a NIHR Senior Investigator (NF-SI-0515-10042) and through the NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre) and the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013), projects EarlyNutrition and ODIN under grant agreement numbers 289346 and 613977.

© 2019 The Obesity Society.

Figures

Figure 1

Flow chart of the GUSTO study population at age 4.5 years.

Figure 2

Effect of ethnicity on the association between BMI at 48 months and abdominal adipose depot volumes at 54 months (p

Figure 3

Effect of sex on the association between BMI at 48 months and abdominal adipose depot volumes at 54 months (p