不仅是童年，只要超重，都会增加患心脏病和糖尿病的风险

不仅是童年，只要超重，都会增加患心脏病和糖尿病的风险

The association between childhood obesity and increased risk of coronary artery disease and type 2 diabetes is due to individual's remaining overweight into adulthood, finds a new University of Bristol study. The research, published in The BMJ, investigated how the genetic influence of being overweight in 453,169 individuals at different stages of life contributed towards their disease risk.

布里斯托尔大学的一项新研究发现，儿童肥胖与冠状动脉疾病和2型糖尿病风险增加之间的关联，是由于个人在成年后仍然超重所致。发表在《英国医学杂志》上的这项研究调查了453169名处于不同生命阶段的人，超重对他们患病风险的遗传影响。

Obesity in childhood is known to have a detrimental impact on various health conditions and disease risk in later life including coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes and cancer. However it is unclear whether being overweight as a child directly influences risk of these diseases or whether they can be reversed through lifestyle changes, particularly as those who are obese in early life tend to remain obese as adults.

众所周知，儿童肥胖对各种健康状况和晚年疾病风险都有不利影响，包括冠心病、2型糖尿病和癌症。然而，尚不清楚儿童超重是否会直接影响这些疾病的风险，也不清楚是否可以通过改变生活方式来逆转，特别是那些在早期肥胖的人成年后往往仍保持肥胖。

Researchers from Bristol Medical School sought to investigate this by using a unique cause-and-effect analytical technique called Mendelian randomisation, which allows scientists to separate the genetic influence of risk factors, such as being overweight as a either a child or as an adult, on risk of disease—such as coronary artery disease, type 2 diabetes, breast and prostate cancer.

布里斯托尔医学院的研究人员试图通过一种独特的因果分析技术，即孟德尔随机化(Mendelian randomisation)来对此进行研究，该技术允许科学家分离出危险因素的遗传影响，如儿童或成人超重，对冠心病等疾病的风险，2型糖尿病、乳腺癌和前列腺癌。

The technique was applied using human genetic data from 453,169 individuals from the UK Biobank study and four large scale genome-wide association studies using measures of BMI in adulthood (average age 57) and self-reported perceived body size at age 10.

这项技术使用了来自英国生物银行研究的453169个人的人类遗传数据和四项大规模全基因组关联研究，这些研究使用了成年期(平均年龄57岁)的BMI指标和10岁时自我报告的感知体型。

The researchers found evidence that childhood obesity is associated with increased risk of coronary heart disease and type 2 diabetes due to a persistent, long-term effect of obesity over many years. This indicates that within a population, individuals who are overweight as children are more likely to be at risk of these diseases as they tend to remain overweight as adults. However, encouragingly this suggests that lowering weight in adulthood could reduce the long-term adverse effects of childhood obesity.

研究人员发现，有证据表明，儿童肥胖与冠心病和2型糖尿病的风险增加有关，这是由于多年来肥胖的持续、长期影响造成的。这表明，在一个人群中，儿童超重的人更有可能患这些疾病，因为他们成年后往往仍然超重。然而，令人鼓舞的是，这表明在成年期降低体重可以减少儿童肥胖的长期不利影响。

In contrast, their findings also provided evidence that having a smaller body size during childhood might increase the risk of breast cancer regardless of body size in adulthood, with timing of puberty also likely playing a role, a finding which needs further research to understand its implications. While no strong evidence was found of a causal effect of either early or later life measures on prostate cancer, this disease should be revisited once data on a larger number of cases are available.

相比之下，他们的发现还提供了证据，证明无论成年后的体型如何，童年时期的体型较小都可能增加患乳腺癌的风险，而青春期的时间也可能起到一定的作用，这一发现需要进一步的研究来理解其影响。虽然没有强有力的证据表明早期或晚期生活对前列腺癌有因果影响，但一旦获得更多病例的数据，就应该重新审视这种疾病。