Do long legs mean healthy life?

With what initially seems extraordinarily unrelated data, a postgraduate medical student at the University of Western Australia has confirmed the link between the size of an unborn baby's thigh bone and the future health of that child.

Dr Kevin Blake's research adds to a growing body of evidence that adult health is set, to a significant degree, by conditions in the womb. Specifically, his study of children from before birth and through the first years of life found that foetuses with shorter femurs at 24 weeks grew up to be children with higher blood pressure at age of six than those with longer bones.

It is accepted that babies who survive a hostile intrauterine environment are subject to long-term consequences like cardiovascular disease in adulthood. Until now, however, it was difficult to identify these babies until they were born.

"Our study now shows that maternal nutrition in the first trimester is more important [than in the later stages of pregnancy as previously thought]," said Dr Blake. "Compared with our findings, birth weight is a crude measurement, and if you wait until then to make assumptions about maternal nutrition, it's too late to do anything about the child's future health."

Item provided courtesy of The University of Western Australia