Nightingale Glenna, Mohan Karthik, Frank John, Wild Sarah, Seth Sohan
School of Health in Social Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2025 Mar 26;20(3):e0320450. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0320450. eCollection 2025.
Obesity has become a global public health concern. However, its precise origins and causation are still hotly debated, especially the relative importance of individual-level genetics and behaviours, as opposed to obesogenic environmental factors. Our key objective is to quantify the impact of sociodemographic and early-life course predictors of being overweight or obese at 16, being overweight/obese/severely obese42 years of age, and on the incidence of a status of being overweight/obese/severely obese between 16 and 42 years of age, spanning the years before and after marked increases in obesity prevalence in the UK. We used data collected from participants and their mothers from the 1958 National Child Development Survey. The outcomes of interest were being overweight (defined as [Formula: see text] ) or obese (defined as BMI > 30 kg/m2) at 16 and 42 years of age and incident obesity between 16 and 42 years of age. We assessed the risk factors for obesity using logistic regression models. We observed a strong influence of maternal obesity for being Obese/Severe Obese compared to being overweight across the three models (ORs 4.328,2.901,3.293 for the models relating to age 16, the age range 16-42, and age 42 respectively). Additionally, we note that maternal smoking (ORs 1.6 to 1.8 for 10 + cigarettes per day compared to non-smokers) on all three outcomes were statistically significant. Females were prone to being overweight/obese at 16 years of age (OR 1.96 CI 1.61 to 2.39) but less prone to develop obesity between 16 and 42 years of age (OR 0.89 CI 0.78 to 1.007). Our results suggest that sociodemographic and early-life risk factors could be used to target obesity prevention programmes for children and adults. In particular, we note that the effect of maternal influences persists through to age 42 and that strikingly, those predictors were just as powerful (and prevalent) in the era before the current obesity pandemic began. This suggests that, as Geoffrey Rose pointed out, novel studies are needed of factors at the community/societal level that may have caused the current obesity pandemic, since individual-level risk factors appear not to have changed over the time period spanning the pandemic's onset and growth.
肥胖已成为全球公共卫生问题。然而，其确切起源和成因仍备受争议，尤其是个体层面的基因和行为相对于致胖环境因素的相对重要性。我们的主要目标是量化社会人口统计学和早期生活历程预测因素对16岁时超重或肥胖、42岁时超重/肥胖/重度肥胖，以及16至42岁期间超重/肥胖/重度肥胖状态发生率的影响，涵盖英国肥胖患病率显著上升前后的年份。我们使用了从1958年全国儿童发展调查的参与者及其母亲那里收集的数据。感兴趣的结果是16岁和42岁时超重（定义为[公式：见原文]）或肥胖（定义为BMI>30 kg/m²），以及16至42岁期间的新发肥胖。我们使用逻辑回归模型评估肥胖的风险因素。在三个模型中，我们观察到与超重相比，母亲肥胖对肥胖/重度肥胖有很强的影响（与16岁、16至42岁年龄范围和42岁相关的模型的OR分别为4.328、2.901、3.293）。此外，我们注意到母亲吸烟（每天吸10支及以上香烟与不吸烟者相比，OR为1.6至1.8）对所有三个结果都具有统计学意义。女性在16岁时更容易超重/肥胖（OR为1.96，CI为1.61至2.39），但在16至42岁期间患肥胖的可能性较小（OR为0.89，CI为0.78至1.007）。我们的结果表明，社会人口统计学和早期生活风险因素可用于针对儿童和成人的肥胖预防计划。特别是，我们注意到母亲影响的作用一直持续到42岁，而且引人注目的是，在当前肥胖大流行开始之前的那个时代，这些预测因素同样强大（且普遍）。这表明，正如杰弗里·罗斯所指出的，需要对社区/社会层面可能导致当前肥胖大流行的因素进行新的研究，因为在大流行开始和发展的时间段内，个体层面的风险因素似乎没有改变。
