It is well established that birth weight has a significant and inverse relationship with systolic blood pressure.1 Rapid weight gain in early infancy after slow fetal growth promotes higher blood pressure and increased cardiovascular risk in later life.2,3 Accelerated weight gain during childhood also enhances the risk of elevated blood pressure associated with low birth weight.4 However, the exact contribution of weight gain during “distinct” periods of early life on later blood pressure and whether accelerated postnatal growth independent of birth weight is critical to a later increase in blood pressure remain unclear. In the current issue of Hypertension , Ben-Shlomo et al5 used multiple measures of growth from birth to 5 years with an approach that modeled changes in growth velocity rather than anthropometry in relation to adult blood pressure. Use of this approach to model growth trajectories allowed them to investigate the inherent complexities of discrete periods of early growth on later blood pressure. In this study they demonstrated that rapid increases in postnatal weight in the first 6 months of life were critical to elevated adult systolic and diastolic blood pressure. …
展开▼
