Association of Women’s Birth Weight with Their Blood Pressure during Pregnancy and with the Body Size of Their Babies

Association of Women's Birth Weight with Their Blood Pressure during Pregnancy and with the Body Size of Their Babies

KEIKO TANABE,^1,2 KOJI TAMAKOSHI² and JUN MUROTSUKI^3,4

¹Department of Nursing, Tohoku University Hospital, Sendai, Japan
²Department of Nursing, Nagoya University School of Health Sciences, Nagoya, Japan
³Department of Advanced Fetal and Developmental Medicine, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Japan
⁴Department of Maternal and Fetal Medicine, Miyagi Children's Hospital, Sendai, Japan

The women's own intrauterine environment may influence their own pregnancy and their babies. The aim of our study was to investigate how a woman's birth weight affects the course of her pregnancy later in life as well as the body size of her babies; this study was based on the developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD) concept. We collected Maternal and Child Health handbooks from 414 women and their biological mothers. They were classified into 3 categories based on the Fetal growth curve of Japan: light-for-date (LFD), which means birth weight is less than the −1.5SD; appropriate-for-date (AFD), which means it lies between the −1.5SD and +1.5SD; and heavy-for-date (HFD), which means it is in the +1.5SD, or higher. In the first trimester, systolic blood pressures (SBPs) were 117.6 (14.4 mmHg), 111.6 (12.4 mmHg), and 105.0 (11.6 mmHg), and diastolic blood pressures (DBP) were 71.0 (8.5 mmHg), 65.7 (9.4 mmHg), and 62.1 (8.7 mmHg) in women born LFD, AFD, and HFD, respectively (SBP: p for trend = 0.018, DBP: p for trend = 0.027). In the second and third trimesters, both SBP and DBP were higher for women born LFD than for those of the other 2 groups. Birth weights of the babies of women born LFD, AFD, and HFD were 2,791.1 (483.0 g), 3,043.4 (361.0 g), and 3,248.0 (431.5 g), respectively (p for trend < 0.01). Our findings support the DOHaD concept and suggest that intrauterine environment in fetal life may be passed down from generation to generation.

keywords —— birth weight of mother; blood pressure during pregnancy; body size of child; developmental origins of disease; intrauterine environment

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Tohoku J. Exp. Med., 2011, 224, 287-292

Correspondence: Keiko Tanabe, R.N., N.M., Ph.D., Department of Nursing, Nagoya University School of Health Sciences, 1-1-20 Daiko-minami, Higashi-ku, Nagoya 461-8673, Japan.

e-mail: tanabe@met.nagoya-u.ac.jp