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Early overweight and pubertal maturation—pathways of association with young adults’ overweight: a longitudinal study

International Journal of Obesity volume 33, pages 14–20 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

Objective:

Objectives of this study were to examine the prospective association of childhood body mass index (BMI) and overweight and pubertal stages with BMI and overweight in early adulthood independent of each other.

Design:

A population-based prospective birth cohort.

Subjects:

We used a population-based prospective birth cohort of 2897 (52% men) young adults who were born during 1981–1983 in Brisbane, Australia, and for whom we had puberty stages using Tanner scale at 14 years and measured BMI at 5 years of age.

Main outcome measures:

Pubertal stages at adolescent and BMI and its categories at 21 years.

Results:

We found that increasing BMI and overweight at 5 years of age predict the advanced stages of puberty. An advanced stage of puberty predicts young adults’ BMI and overweight status at 21 years. When taking both childhood BMI and pubertal status into consideration, we found that being overweight at 5 years substantively increases BMI at 21 years, regardless of the stage of puberty reported at 14 years. We also found that subjects with normal BMI at 5 years but with higher stages of puberty at 14 years had threefolds greater risk to be overweight at 21 years compared with their counterparts. All associations remained consistent after controlling for potential confounders.

Conclusions:

Although this study underscores the impact of both child overweight and pubertal development on young adults’ obesity, the mechanism that further explainsthe impact of puberty needs to be identified.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all the participants in the study, the MUSP data collection team and Greg Shuttlewood, University of Queensland, who has helped to manage the data for the MUSP. The core study was funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) of Australia. AA Mamun is funded by the NHMRC Career Development Awards in Population Health (ID 519756). This study was funded by the National Heart Foundation of Australia (ID 2007001895). The core MUSP study was funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) of Australia but the views expressed in the paper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of any funding body.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Population Health, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    A A Mamun, M R Hayatbakhsh, G Williams & J Najman

  2. Mater Children's Hospital, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    M O'Callaghan

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  1. A A Mamun
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  2. M R Hayatbakhsh
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  3. M O'Callaghan
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  4. G Williams
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  5. J Najman
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Correspondence to A A Mamun.

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Mamun, A., Hayatbakhsh, M., O'Callaghan, M. et al. Early overweight and pubertal maturation—pathways of association with young adults’ overweight: a longitudinal study. Int J Obes 33, 14–20 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2008.220

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