Department of Pediatrics, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick, New Jersey, United States of America.
Department of Economics, Rider University and National Bureau of Economic Research, Lawrenceville, New Jersey, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2024 Sep 6;19(9):e0309363. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0309363. eCollection 2024.
Children born small for gestational age (SGA) may be at risk for earlier puberty and adverse long-term health sequelae. This study investigates associations between SGA and age at menarche using secondary data on 1,027 female children in a population-based U.S. birth cohort that over-sampled non-marital births, which in the U.S. is a policy-relevant population. SGA was defined as <10th percentile of weight for gestational age compared to the national U.S. distribution. We estimated unadjusted and adjusted Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) models of associations between SGA and age at menarche in years, as well as unadjusted and adjusted logistic regression models of associations between SGA and early menarche (before age 11). SGA was not significantly associated with earlier age at menarche, even when adjusting for maternal sociodemographic characteristics, prenatal smoking, and maternal pre-pregnancy overweight and obesity. Similarly, SGA was not significantly associated with the odds of menarche occurring before age 11. However, maternal non-Hispanic Black race-ethnicity, Hispanic ethnicity, and pre-pregnancy obesity all had independent associations with average earlier age at menarche and menarche before age 11. Thus, maternal risk factors appear to play more influential roles in determining pubertal development.
出生体重小于胎龄儿（SGA）的儿童可能面临青春期提前和长期健康不良后果的风险。本研究使用美国基于人群的出生队列中的二次数据，调查了 SGA 与初潮年龄之间的关系，该队列对非婚生育进行了超额采样，在美国，这是一个与政策相关的人群。SGA 定义为与美国全国分布相比，体重处于胎龄的第 10 百分位数以下。我们估计了未调整和调整后的普通最小二乘法（OLS）模型，以评估 SGA 与初潮年龄（以年来衡量）之间的关联，以及未调整和调整后的逻辑回归模型，以评估 SGA 与初潮提前（11 岁之前）之间的关联。即使调整了母亲的社会人口特征、产前吸烟以及母亲的孕前超重和肥胖状况，SGA 与初潮年龄提前也没有显著关联。同样，SGA 与 11 岁前初潮的几率也没有显著关联。然而，母亲是非西班牙裔黑人种族、西班牙裔种族和孕前肥胖，这些都与平均初潮年龄提前和 11 岁前初潮有关。因此，母亲的风险因素似乎在决定青春期发育方面发挥了更重要的作用。
