Background: Previous epidemiologic studies have reported famine exposure during early life association with overweight or obesity in adulthood, but a consistent perspective has not been established to date.
Purpose: To determine, by conducting a systematic review and meta-analysis, whether exposure to famine could increase body mass index (BMI) in adult or not, and assess the association between famine exposure and the risk of overweight or obesity.
Methods: Published articles were systematically searched (until August, 2017) from PubMed, ScienceDirect, Cochrane, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure. Initially, comparing differences in BMI between exposed and non-exposed groups that weight mean difference (WMD) were used. Subsequently, the effect of famine exposure on overweight or obesity risk, which pooled relative risks (RRs), odds ratios (ORs) or hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated using a random-effects model.
Result: Twenty studies were included in this systematic review and meta-analysis. Compared with non-exposed group, famine exposure group significantly increased the risk of overweight (OR = 1.10, 95% CI: 1.04-1.16) and obesity (OR = 1.15, 95% CI: 1.05-1.24). Sensitivity analyses revealed no significant change in the famine exposure and BMI, the risk of overweight and obesity study when any one study was excluded. Subgroup analyses showed that age, gender, exposure type, study type, continent, famine cause and paper publication date were associated with BMI, the risk of overweight and obesity. Meta-regression analyses suggested that continent, famine cause could partially explain heterogeneity for famine exposure and BMI studies.
Conclusion: The systematic review and meta-analysis indicates that famine exposure during early life may increase BMI, the risk of overweight and obesity, especially for female, fetal famine exposure or subject age less than 50. Furthermore, famine exposure group the risk of overweight and obesity in cross-sectional studies, Asian studies, famine cause by natural disaster or paper published from 2015 to the present studies are higher than that of non-exposed group.