Research Highlights

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  • Clinical medicine

Published online: 7 October 2009 | doi:10.1038/nchina.2009.198

Obesity: The fat and the short of it

Felix Cheung

Introduction

© (2009) istockphoto.com

Malnutrition in childhood can have devastating effects on body development that often persist into adulthood. Yonghong Wang at Chongqing Medical University and co-workers¹ have studied how the Great Chinese Famine affected the people living in Chongqing. They found that females who were born before or during the famine have a greater chance of being short and overweight than those who were born after the famine.

Between 1959 and 1961, China experienced what was probably the most extensive famine in human history. Millions of people in Chongqing suffered severe malnutrition or died as a result.

The researchers obtained body weight, height and body mass index data from records of Chongqing residents who had annual physical examinations at the First Affiliated Hospital between 2006 and 2008. They found that females who were born 1–3 years before (the toddler group) or during (the gestational group) the famine are heavier and shorter than those who were born 1–3 years after the famine (the control group). For males, however, the famine seems to have made them slimmer.

Most interestingly, females in the toddler group were 1.46 times more likely to be obese than those in the control group. The findings suggest that severe malnutrition in the first three years of childhood may have important health consequences on body development later in life, especially for women.

The authors of this work are from:
Public Health Center, First Affiliated Hospital, Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, China; Department of Neurology, First Affiliated Hospital, Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, China; Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Loma Linda University School of Medicine, Loma Linda, California, USA; Department of Statistics, Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, China.

Reference

1. Wang, Y., Wang, X., Kong, Y., Zhang, J. H. & Zeng, Q. The Great Chinese Famine leads to shorter and overweight females in Chongqing Chinese population after 50 years. Obesity doi:10.1038/oby.2009.296 (2009). | Article | OpenURL