Department of Public Health, Aarhus University, DK-8000 Aarhus, Denmark.
Population Health Sciences, Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 2BN, UK.
Nutrients. 2023 Jun 29;15(13):2970. doi: 10.3390/nu15132970.
Infant feeding practices have been hypothesized to influence offspring's body mass index (BMI) later in life, and women with overweight or obesity tend to wean their infants earlier than women with healthy BMI. We, therefore, aimed to investigate how much early age of weaning mediated the maternal-offspring adiposity relationship. The study included 4920 mother-child pairs from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children birth cohort. G-computation was applied to estimate the natural direct (NDE) and indirect (NIE) effects, via the age of weaning (<3 months, 3 months, >3 months), of maternal pre-pregnancy overweight or obesity on offspring's BMI and fat mass index. The NDE of maternal overweight or obesity on offspring BMI at 17 years old was 2.63 kg/m (95% CI: 2.27 to 2.99). The NIE via the age of weaning was 0.02 kg/m (95% CI: 0.00 to 0.04), corresponding to 0.8% of the total effect. Similar results were observed for the offspring's fat mass index. The NDE and NIE were similar to the main analyses when we looked at the relationship stratified by breastfeeding status. Our study found a minimal influence of age of weaning on the pathway between maternal and offspring adiposity, indicating the age of weaning may not be a key mediator.
婴儿喂养方式被认为会影响后代的体重指数（BMI），超重或肥胖的女性往往比 BMI 健康的女性更早地给婴儿断奶。因此，我们旨在研究断奶年龄对母婴肥胖关系的影响程度。该研究纳入了来自雅芳纵向父母与子女研究出生队列的 4920 对母婴对。我们应用 G 计算来估计通过断奶年龄（<3 个月、3 个月、>3 个月），母亲孕前超重或肥胖对后代 BMI 和脂肪质量指数的直接（NDE）和间接（NIE）效应。母亲超重或肥胖对 17 岁后代 BMI 的 NDE 为 2.63kg/m（95%CI：2.27 至 2.99）。通过断奶年龄的 NIE 为 0.02kg/m（95%CI：0.00 至 0.04），相当于总效应的 0.8%。对于后代的脂肪质量指数，也观察到了类似的结果。当我们按母乳喂养状况对关系进行分层分析时，NDE 和 NIE 与主要分析结果相似。我们的研究发现，断奶年龄对母婴肥胖之间的关系影响很小，表明断奶年龄可能不是关键的中介因素。
