Poor growth prior to early childhood: Decreased health and life‐span in the adult

1986 
Early growth, Vertebral neural canals, Adult health ABSTRACT Previous studies in animal populations have shown that stunted neural and thymolymphatic growth early in development may result in permanently impaired neural and immune function, decreased body growth, vertebral wedging, and decreased life-span. In the human adult, small verte- bral neural canal (VNC) diameters may reflect early stunted neural and immune development and impaired function that leads to decreased health (inferred by greater vertebral wedging) and life-span in the adult. VNC, which complete their growth by early childhood (age 4), are markers of early devel- opment in adults. On the other hand, features following general body growth, such as height, weight (represented here by vertebral body height) continues to grow until young adulthood. They are less reliable, because they readily experience catch-up growth (even in chronically stressed populations) and, unlike VNC, may mask poor early growth. To test associations between early growth and adult health and life-span in humans, we measured 2,060 VNC, vertebral heights, vertebral wedging, nerve-root tunnel lengths, severity of vertebral osteophytosis, and ages at death in 90 adult (aged 15-55 years) prehistoric skeletons (950-1300 A.D.). Tibia1 lengths were also measured in a subsample (n = 30). Multivariate, bivariate, and nonparametric analyses showed that small VNC are significantly associated with greater vertebral wedging and decreased life-span (P < 0.05-0.00001). VNC are independent of vertebral body heights and tibia1 lengths (general body growth). VNC, but not statural components, are useful in predicting adult health, presumably be- cause they reflect neural and immune development and do not readily experi- ence catch-up growth. Thus, longitudinal retrospective measures of early growth and adult health were systematically linked within individuals regard- less of confounding factors operating over the 350-year time period. Since this research was completed, this model has repeatedly been independently con- firmed in four living urban industrial populations. Longitudinal retrospective analysis was employed together with direct measures of VNC, neural and immune function. Together these results suggested that it may be essential to improve growth prior to early childhood in order to maximize adult health and life-span.
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