BMJ 2001;322:771 ( 31 March )

Papers

Prenatal growth and subsequent marital status: longitudinal study

David I W Phillips, professor of endocrine and metabolic programming ^a, David J Handelsman, director ^c, Johan G Eriksson, head of unit ^b, Tom Forsén, researcher ^b, Clive Osmond, reader in medical statistics ^a, David J P Barker, director ^a. 

^a Medical Research Council Environmental Epidemiology Unit, Southampton General Hospital, Southampton SO16 6YD, ^b National Public Health Institute, Department of Epidemiology and Health Promotion, Diabetes and Genetic Epidemiology Unit, FIN-00300, Helsinki, Finland, ^c ANZAC Research Institute and Department of Andrology, Concord Hospital, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia

Correspondence to: D I W Phillips on diwp@mrc.soton.ac.uk

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Unmarried men have higher rates of cardiovascular disease and a shorter lifespan than married men.¹ The hypotheses that have been proposed to explain this are either that healthier men tend to marry or that the social support offered by marriage is protective. It is also possible that factors leading people to remain unmarried are linked with the susceptibility to cardiovascular disease. As small size at birth is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease,² we hypothesised that restriction of prenatal growth might be associated with marital status. We tested this in two long term prospective birth cohorts of men who belonged to generations in which marriage was a social norm.

	Methods and results

We studied 3577 men born at the Helsinki University Central Hospital, Finland, during 1924-33.³ We linked the birth data for these men with school records of height and weight obtained at age 15 and with census information on marital status, social . . . [Full text of this article]

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Rapid Responses:

Read all Rapid Responses

Is odds ratio per kilogram birthweight the best way to describe the data?

Martin Bland
bmj.com, 30 Mar 2001 [Full text]

"Men who were small at birth are less likely to marry"

Jo
bmj.com, 1 Apr 2001 [Full text]

Re: "Men who were small at birth are less likely to marry"

Nick Finch
bmj.com, 4 Apr 2001 [Full text]

Stretching an idea too far

Christopher Brome
bmj.com, 4 Apr 2001 [Full text]

Programming of sexual orientation?

Simon Langley-Evans
bmj.com, 5 Apr 2001 [Full text]

Prenatal growth and marital status: authors' response

D I W Phillips
bmj.com, 7 Apr 2001 [Full text]

are the big ones getting married sooner

Tomislav Bukvic
bmj.com, 7 Apr 2001 [Full text]

Differences in auditory ability between homosexual and heterosexual women.

Michelle Brown, et al.
bmj.com, 9 Apr 2001 [Full text]

Neurobiology of prenatal growth and subsequent marital status

Ernest H Friedman
bmj.com, 13 Apr 2001 [Full text]

Need more evidence from divorced men to surport the relation of birth weight and marital status

Clayman ZK Zhang
bmj.com, 27 Apr 2002 [Full text]

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