CiteULike is a free online bibliography manager. Register and you can start organising your references online.

Life course path analysis of birth weight, childhood growth, and adult systolic blood pressure. Export

American journal of epidemiology, Vol. 169, No. 10. (15 May 2009), pp. 1167-1178.

Citation Format

[Posts]

View FullText article


gareth's tags for this article

lifecourse

X Reviews [Write a review of this article]

X Find related articles from these CiteULike users

X Find related articles with these CiteULike tags

X Posting History

X Abstract

The inverse associations between birth weight and later adverse health outcomes and the positive associations between adult body size and poor health imply that increases in relative body size between birth and adulthood may be undesirable. In this paper, the authors describe life course path analysis, a method that can be used to jointly estimate associations between body sizes at different time points and associations of body sizes throughout life with health outcomes. Additionally, this method makes it possible to assess both the direct effect and the indirect effect mediated through later body size, and thereby the total effect, of size and changes in size on later outcomes. Using data on childhood body size and adult systolic blood pressure from a sample of 1,284 Danish men born between 1936 and 1970, the authors compared results from path analysis with results from 3 standard regression methods. Path analysis produced easily interpretable results, and compared with standard regression methods it produced a noteworthy gain in statistical power. The effect of change in relative body size on adult blood pressure was more pronounced after age 11 years than in earlier childhood. These results suggest that increases in body size prior to age 11 years are less harmful to adult blood pressure than increases occurring after this age.


X BibTeX record

X RIS record


Privacy Statement | Terms & Conditions
CiteULike organises scholarly (or academic) papers or literature and provides bibliographic (which means it makes bibliographies) for universities and higher education establishments. It helps undergraduates and postgraduates. People studying for PhDs or in postdoctoral (postdoc) positions. The service is similar in scope to EndNote or RefWorks or any other reference manager like BibTeX, but it is a social bookmarking service for scientists and humanities researchers.