Abstract
Objective:
To present the conceptual foundations that explain how events occurring during
intrauterine life may influence body development, emphasizing the interrelation
between low birth weight and risk of obesity throughout life.
Data sources:
Google Scholar, Library Scientific Electronic Online (SciELO), EBSCO, Scopus, and
PubMed were the databases. “Catch-up growth”, “life course health”, “disease”,
“child”, “development”, “early life”, “perinatal programming”, “epigenetics”,
“breastfeeding”, “small baby syndrome”, “phenotype”, “micronutrients”, “maternal
nutrition”, “obesity”, and “adolescence” were isolated or associated keywords for
locating reviews and epidemiological, intervention and experimental studies
published between 1934 and 2014, with complete texts in Portuguese and English.
Duplicate articles, editorials and reviews were excluded, as well as approaches of
diseases different from obesity.
Data synthesis:
Within 47 selected articles among 538 eligible ones, the thrifty phenotype
hypothesis, the epigenetic mechanisms and the development plasticity were
identified as fundamental factors to explain the mechanisms involved in health and
disease throughout life. They admit the possibility that both cardiometabolic
events and obesity originate from intrauterine nutritional deficiency, which,
associated with a food supply that is excessive to the metabolic needs of the
organism in early life stages, causes endocrine changes. However, there may be
phenotypic reprogramming for low birth weight newborns from adequate nutritional
supply, thus overcoming a restrictive intrauterine environment. Therefore,
catch-up growth may indicate recovery from intrauterine constraint, which is
associated with short-term benefits or harms in adulthood.
Conclusions:
Depending on the nutritional adequacy in the first years of life, developmental
plasticity may lead to phenotype reprogramming and reduce the risk of obesity.
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