Objective: To investigate whether fetal growth restriction is associated with changes in cardiovascular risk factors later in life.
Design: A retrospective cohort study.
Setting: Tertiary-care hospital serving urban population from the Brazilian Northeast.
Participants/patients: 172 adolescents aged 10-20 years were evaluated for the effects of fetal growth restriction on anthropometric measurements, blood pressure, lipids and fasting glucose and flow-mediated brachial artery dilatation.
Intervention: The adolescents' birth weight and their gestational age at birth were used to identify fetal growth restriction according to the 10th percentile and divided between exposed (<10th percentile) and not exposed (≥10th percentile). The Student-t test or the Mann-Whitney test and chi-square were used. The significance level was considered to be 0.05.
Main outcome measure(s): Current Anthropometric, metabolic and endothelial measures of subjects.
Results: The majority of the current anthropometric, metabolic and endothelial measures did not differ between groups. The unexposed group had a higher hip circumference (89.1 cm) and higher total cholesterol (196.4mg/dL) than those exposed (85.4 cm, 136.9mg/dL, respectively) (P=0.04).
Conclusions: In the sample studied, no association was found between fetal growth restriction and changes in cardiovascular risk factors in adolescents.