Early individual and family predictors of weight trajectories from early childhood to adolescence: results from the Millennium Cohort Study

Abstract

AbstractBackgroundEarly infancy and childhood are critical periods in the establishment of lifelong weight trajectories. Parents and early family environment have a strong effect on children’s health behaviors that track into adolescence, influencing lifelong risk of obesity.ObjectiveWe aimed to identify developmental trajectories of body mass index (BMI) from early childhood to adolescence and to assess their early individual and family predictors.MethodsThis was a secondary analysis of the Millennium Cohort Study and included 17,166 children. Weight trajectories were estimated using growth mixture modeling based on age- and gender-specific BMI Z-scores, followed by a bias-adjusted regression analysis.ResultsWe found four BMI trajectories: Weight Loss (69%), Early Weight Gain (24%), Early Obesity (3.7%), and Late Weight Gain (3.3%). Weight trajectories were mainly settled by early adolescence. Lack of sleep and eating routines, low emotional self-regulation, child-parent conflict, and low child-parent closeness in early childhood were significantly associated with unhealthy weight trajectories, alongside poverty, low maternal education, maternal obesity, and prematurity.ConclusionsUnhealthy BMI trajectories were defined in early and middle-childhood, and disproportionally affected children from disadvantaged families. This study further points out that household routines, self-regulation, and child-parent relationships are possible areas for family-based obesity prevention interventions.