Fetal and Infant Origins of Adult Disease

Diet, smoking and other aspects of adult lifestyle have a limited ability to explain why people develop coronary heart disease, stroke, diabetes and obstructive lung disease in middle and old age. Recent research suggests that these diseases are importantly determined by failure of development of particular sugar or metabolic processes in foetal life and infancy. Non-insulin dependent diabetes, for example, may result from failure of growth of the pancreas during a critical early phase. The first chapters of this book on early life "programming" describe the origins of the hypothesis in geographical studies in England and Wales. This is followed by a series of unique studies of men and women born fifty and more years ago whose measurements at birth and growth and feeding in infancy were recorded at the time. Many thousands have been traced. In those who have died cause of death can be related to early growth. Examination of the living allows their blood pressures, cholesterol and insulin concentrations and other measurements to be related to particular, and different patterns of early growth.