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Epidemiology and Population Health

Generational increase in obesity among young women: a prospective analysis of mother–daughter dyads

International Journal of Obesity volume 40, pages 176–180 (2016)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Background/Objectives:

Increases in obesity in young adults over recent decades are shown by national survey data but have yet to be replicated using prospective data. We aim to quantify the increase in obesity and overweight over two generations of young adult women using prospective measures of body mass index (BMI).

Subjects/Methods:

Data are from the Mater University Study of Pregnancy (MUSP), a prospective pre-birth cohort study started in 1981 in Brisbane, Australia. Analyses were restricted to 992 mother–daughter dyads who were at similar ages at the time they were assessed and for whom measures of BMI were available. We also conducted an additional analysis to test whether there was a similar increase amongst father–son dyads. We used multinomial logistic regression for clustered data to compare the same prospective measures of BMI categories between mother and daughters.

Results:

Controlling for a number of sociodemographic and lifestyle factors in the female sample, daughters had 5.04 (3.03, 8.85) times the odds of being obese and 2.54 (1.86, 3.54) times the odds of being overweight compared with their mothers. A large increase in obesity was also observed in the male sample.

Conclusions:

Using a longitudinal design to partly account for familial confounding of obesity risk factors, this study confirms a large and concerning increases in obesity rates over two generations of young adults and suggests increases in obesity over the past 20 years may be greater than previously anticipated.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the MUSP team, MUSP participants, the Mater Misericordiae Hospital, and the Schools of Social Science, Population Health and Medicine (University of Queensland). This study was funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). RA is funded by a NHMRC Career Development Award Level 2 in Population Health (APP1012485).

Author contributions

RA devised the hypothesis, study design, conducted initial analysis and help draft the final document. KSB conducted the final analysis in consultation with GMW and drafted the original version of the manuscript. GMW contributed to MUSP study design, data collection and analysis. JMN contributed to MUSP study design data collection and writing. NZ and AM contributed to data interpretation and writing of the manuscript. All authors provided critical input and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Disclaimer

The sponsors of the study (the NHMRC) had no role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; and preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript.

Access to data

KSB and RA had full access to the data used in the study and take responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.

Granting of licence

The leads author grants permission of licence and copyright to The International Journal of Obesity on behalf of all authors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Public Health and Centre for Youth Substance Abuse Research, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    R Alati

  2. School of Population Health, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    K S Betts, G M Williams, N Zalbahar & A Mamun

  3. School of Social Science and Population Health, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    J M Najman

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  1. R Alati
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  6. A Mamun
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to K S Betts.

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Supplementary Information accompanies this paper on International Journal of Obesity website

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Alati, R., Betts, K., Williams, G. et al. Generational increase in obesity among young women: a prospective analysis of mother–daughter dyads. Int J Obes 40, 176–180 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2015.153

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