Short or long sleep duration was an important sleep-related factor independently associated with memory impairment and may be a useful marker for increased risk of cognitive impairment in older people.
Smoking cessation was beneficial in attenuating the risk of carotid atherosclerosis associated with cigarette smoking. The short duration of cessation in earlier studies is a likely explanation for the inconsistent results.
The IDF compared to the ATP III definition shows a stronger association with the MS and associated vascular disease in Chinese. The prevalence of the MS is alarmingly high in this older Chinese population. Comprehensive strategies are needed for prevention and treatment of the MS to reduce the increased societal burden of cardiovascular disease in China.
This study provides little support for environmental mismatch over the life course increasing obesity in this rapidly transitioning southern Chinese population. However, our findings highlight different effects of the epidemiologic transition in men and women, perhaps with pre-adult exposures as a critical window for sex-specific effects.
BackgroundBirth weight is negatively associated with cardiovascular diseases and diabetes, but the associations are less well-established in developing populations where birth weight is often unavailable. We studied the association of birth weight and cardiovascular risk, using birth rank as an instrumental variable, in Southern China.MethodsWe used published data on birth weight by birth rank from an appropriate population and baseline data from the Guangzhou Biobank Cohort Study phases 2 & 3 (2005-8) to examine the adjusted associations, using instrumental variable analysis, of birth weight with clinically measured cardiovascular risk factors and the metabolic syndrome in older (≥ 50 years) men (n = 5,051) and women (n = 13,907).ResultsEstimated birth weight was associated with lower blood pressure (systolic -0.25 mm Hg 95% confidence interval (CI), -0.53 to 0.03 and diastolic -0.33 mm Hg 95% CI -0.48 to -0.18 per standard deviation higher birth weight), but had little association with glucose, lipids, waist-hip ratio, body mass index or the metabolic syndrome, adjusted for age, sex, early environment and number of offspring.ConclusionBirth weight may impact blood pressure; however associations of birth weight with other cardiovascular risk factors may not be related to foetal exposures, but speculatively could be an historical co-incidence, with corresponding implications for prevention.
Intergenerational 'mismatch' between maternal and adult environments, common in developing economies, has been hypothesized as contributing to obesity. In a rapidly developing population, we examined whether maternal conditions, proxied by maternal literacy, were associated with adult adiposity, proxied by body mass index (BMI) and waist-hip ratio (WHR) and whether these associations were modified by later life conditions, proxied by socio-economic position (SEP) at three life stages. We also examined if maternal conditions had sex-specific associations with adult adiposity. In a cross-sectional study of 19,957 adults (> or =50 years) from the Guangzhou Biobank Cohort Study (phases 2 and 3 in 2005-2008), we used multivariable linear regression to assess the association of maternal literacy with BMI and WHR, and whether the associations varied with sex, age or SEP. The adjusted association of maternal literacy with WHR varied with sex. In women, but not men, maternal illiteracy was associated with higher WHR and BMI, adjusted for age; these associations remained, although attenuated, after adjusting for lifestyle, life course SEP and paternal literacy. There was little evidence that associations varied with SEP at any stage, although continuity of poor conditions into early life may have exacerbated the association of maternal illiteracy with higher WHR in women. Poor maternal conditions in developing populations may increase vulnerability to adiposity in women. Whether such sex-specific intergenerational effects are driven by epigenetics, maternal sex hormones or other mechanisms, remains to be determined. However, mismatched maternal and later life conditions do not appear to be associated with adiposity. Our findings, although preliminary, imply that a transient epidemic of obesity may occur in the first generation of women who experience economic development.
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