A Study On Relationship Between Fetal Growth And RiskFactors For Coronary Heart Disease During Adulthood

1. ObjectiveRelationship between fetal growth and coronary heart disease (CHD) during adulthood, i.e., "fetal origins hypothesis" originated from Barker, is one of the hot topics in epidemiologic study at present in the world. Owing to the limitation of finding valuable birth records and difficulty in tracing subjects born several decades ago, there has been no population-based study on this hypothesis yet in China. To examine if there exists relationship between fetal growth and risk factors for CHD during adulthood in Chinese population and how they relate to each other, a follow-up study was carried out in a group of singletons born during 1948-1954 in PUMC hospital, Beijing, whose birth size was measured in detail.2. MethodsA retrospective cohort method was used in this research. According to the birth records available and possibility to trace them, about 4,400 babies including twins born during the period from July 1948 to December 1954 were initially identified as target population for this study, 1,921 birth records from them, based on their birth sequence were abstracted for tracing. 725 (38%) subjects were traced...