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Submitted on August 1, 2005
Accepted on January 17, 2006
Department of Social Medicine, University of Bristol, UK; Clinical Sciences at North Bristol, Southmead Hospital, Bristol, UK
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: Issy.Bray{at}bristol.ac.uk.
Context: Taller individuals with longer legs have a higher risk of cancer, but a lower risk of coronary heart disease (CHD).
Objective: We investigated whether childhood height and its components are associated with the insulin-like growth factor (IGF)-system in adulthood.
Design and participants: We analyzed data from 429 participants of the Boyd Orr cohort, for whom height measured in childhood (mean age 7.4, 5th and 95th centiles: 2.5 and 13.3 yr) in 1937-1939 could be related to levels of IGF-I, IGF-II, IGF binding protein (BP)-2 and IGFBP-3 in adulthood (mean age: 71.1). In 385 participants, measured height in adulthood could be related to IGF levels.
Results: In fully-adjusted models (controlling for age, sex, socio-economic factors, lifestyle, BMI), childhood height and its components were not associated with adult circulating IGF-I, IGF-II or IGFBP-2 levels. IGFBP-3 was 85.5 ng/ml higher (95% CI: -11.6 to 182.5; P = 0.08) per SD increase in childhood trunk length and 83.6 ng/ml lower (95% CI: -10.3 to 177.5; P = 0.08) per SD increase in childhood leg:trunk ratio. Height in adulthood was not associated with IGF-I, IGF-II or IGFBP-3, and was inversely associated with IGFBP-2 (P = 0.05) after additionally controlling for childhood height.
Conclusion: There was no evidence that associations of childhood height with cancer and CHD risk are mediated by IGF-I in adulthood. The anthropometric associations with IGFBP-2 and IGFBP-3 could be chance findings but warrant additional investigation. IGF levels in childhood may be more important determinants of long-term disease risk than adult levels.
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