Contribution of parental blood pressures to association between low birth weight and adult high blood pressure: cross sectional study

Introduction

During the past decade a series of epidemiological studies in several countries has documented that babies of low birth weight have higher blood pressure as children and adults.1-3 These relations are maintained after correction for gestational age at birth or other influences on blood pressure in later life, including obesity, socioeconomic group, and alcohol consumption. The association between low birth weight and subsequent hypertension may be explained by inadequate fetal nutrition during pregnancy, resulting either from inadequate maternal nutrition or placental dysfunction.4 Fetal adaptations to undernutrition are thought to programme permanent changes in factors that influence blood pressure in later life, including cortisol, growth factors, and insulin.4 This model is supported by experiments in animals, in which manipulations in utero, including maternal undernutrition5 and treatment with glucocorticoids,6 result in lower birth weight, raised blood pressure, and hormonal abnormalities in the adult offspring.

Both blood pressure7 and birth weight8 are influenced by hereditary factors, so there may be a familial association between low birth weight and hypertension which does not depend on programming of raised blood pressure. Therefore, assessment of the parental background of people with low birth weight and subsequent hypertension is important. Studies which included information about the participants' mothers have shown that maternal smoking, socioeconomic group, and anaemia did not explain the observed relations between low birth weight and subsequent high blood pressure.9-11 Maternal blood pressure has been assessed during pregnancy, when higher pressures were associated with lower birth weight12-14 and higher blood pressure in the offspring. 13 15-17 Only one study has measured maternal blood pressure outside pregnancy, and this showed that higher blood pressure in 4 year old children was associated with both lower birth weight and higher maternal blood pressure.11 To our knowledge, no study has taken account of any paternal factor other than socioeconomic group. We examined a population of young adults in whom blood pressures have been measured in both parents and sought to establish the contribution of parental blood pressure to the relation between low birth weight and subsequent hypertension.

Subjects and methods

In 1979, as part of the screening programme for the Medical Research Council's mild hypertension trial, blood pressure was measured in 6088 adults registered at the Ladywell Medical Centre in Edinburgh. In 1986, blood pressure was recorded in 864 young adults registered at the medical centre whose parents had both participated in the earlier screening programme. Some of the 864 offspring were siblings, so the cohort was drawn from 603 families. Details of these offspring and parents have been described elsewhere7 and are shown in table 1. All blood pressures were measured in the same way: at any convenient time of day, after 5 minutes of sitting, and by two trained observers using a Hawksley random zero sphygmomanometer. The means of the two readings were used for analysis. Offspring were also weighed and their height was measured, and women were asked if they were using an oral contraceptive. Offspring from this cohort were then selected from groups with maximum contrast in their predisposition to high blood pressure—that is, on the basis of offspring and parental blood pressures being in the upper or lower third of the age adjusted distribution. Subgroups of these offspring participated in a series of further studies, which are reviewed elsewhere. 18 19

Results

The blood pressure of the offspring was higher in men than women and positively correlated with current body weight (table 2). In addition, higher maternal or paternal systolic blood pressure was associated with higher systolic blood pressure in the offspring. Birth weight was lower in the offspring of younger mothers (table 3). In addition, higher maternal, but not paternal, systolic blood pressure was associated with lower birth weight in the offspring.

If parental blood pressures were ignored birth weight and subsequent systolic blood pressure were inversely correlated after correction for sex and current body weight (P=0.06), such that a 1 kg decrease in birth weight was associated with a 2.24 mm Hg increase in systolic blood pressure (table 2). However, if parental blood pressures were included in the regression model they had a significant effect, such that the relation between birth weight and blood pressure was weaker (P=0.15), a 1 kg decrease in birth weight being associated with a 1.71 mm Hg increase in systolic blood pressure (table 2).

Discussion

This study confirms a relation between low birth weight and high blood pressure in young adults which is of similar strength to that found in other groups of this age.1 Given the small sample size relative to other studies, this relation was not significant. The study also confirms the well documented influence of parental blood pressure on blood pressure in offspring.7 Our study allows the contribution of parental blood pressure to the relation between low birth weight and high blood pressure in adult offspring to be assessed. It shows that mothers with higher blood pressure measured between 9 and 19 years after their pregnancy had offspring with lower birth weight (P<0.01). These results suggest that low birth weight is, at least in part, a feature of the inherited contribution to hypertension. In this context, the inherited contribution may be mediated by genetic or shared environmental factors, or both. As a result, the correlation between low birth weight and subsequent high blood pressure is confounded by the influence of parental blood pressure.

The size of this confounding effect is difficult to measure because of differences in the precision of the measurements. Both inherited and non-inherited factors are likely to contribute to the relation between birth weight and systolic blood pressure. When we accounted for parental blood pressure, the slope of the relation was reduced from 2.24 mm Hg/kg to 1.71 mm Hg/kg (table 2), suggesting that as much as 24% is accounted for by inherited factors. However, the offspring in this study, born in Edinburgh during 1959-70, lived in a comparatively favourable economic and nutritional environment. The influence of variations in maternal nutrition during pregnancy may be comparatively small in this group, making the inherited influence more apparent. In other populations—for example, those born in India or in wartime Europe, 23 24 —nutritional factors may be more important. None the less, these observations have important implications for attempts to explain the correlates of low birth weight in humans. In addition to investigation of programmed responses to events in early life, inherited mechanisms should be sought which could explain the association between low birth weight and high blood pressure.