The Relationship Between The Intrauterine Fetal Growth Retardation In A Chinese Population And The Risk Of Cerebrovascular Disease In Adult Life

Background: Most chronic non-communicable diseases such as ischemic heart disease, hypertension, diabetes mellitus originate as a result of the joint effects of genetic and environmental risk factors. Trditionally risl factors associated with adult life style, such as smoking, obesity have gained a great deal of interest. In more recent years, attention has been paid to risk factors early in life (Intrauterine fetal growth retardation IUGR). A large number of studies have shown an inverse relationship between body size at birth, as a marker of foetal growth, and the chronic diseases in later life. The intrauterine environment is now generally accepted as an important determinants of the risk of the disease in adulthood. This is the hypothesis of "fetal origin of adult diseases". However, few previous studies focus on the association between the body size at birth and cerebrovascular disease in later life, and they were all carried out in the western developed countries.Objective: In this study, we investigated the relationship between later-life cerebrovascular disease and birth measurements, environmental exposure after birth, as well as some common adult chronic comorbidities in birth cohort. The purpose was to determine the independent effects of pre-birth factors and post-birth factors on late-life cerebrovascular disease.Methods: The subjects of this study were individuals born in Peking Union Medical College Hospital (PUMCH) from 1921 to 1954, whose medical records at birth were still available during our study. Some of them were found in the residence registers according to the clues provided in the medical records, and others were attacted by the public medias. A team of physicians and cinical laboratory departments administered the clinical examinations (including interview inventory, physical examination, laboratory assays, and brain CT scan) for the subjects at the outpatient clinic of PUMCH. There were 2085 of them who participanted the clinical examinations. According to the results of the clinical...