Long-term adverse influence of smoking during pregnancy on height and body size of offspring at ten years old in the UK Biobank cohort

Yuxuan Wu; Xingjie Hao; Kexuan Zhu; Chu Zheng; Fengjun Guan; Ping Zeng; Ting Wang

doi:10.1016/j.ssmph.2023.101506

Long-term adverse influence of smoking during pregnancy on height and body size of offspring at ten years old in the UK Biobank cohort

SSM Popul Health. 2023 Aug 30:24:101506. doi: 10.1016/j.ssmph.2023.101506. eCollection 2023 Dec.

Authors

Yuxuan Wu¹, Xingjie Hao², Kexuan Zhu¹, Chu Zheng¹, Fengjun Guan³, Ping Zeng^{1

4

5

6

7}, Ting Wang¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Xuzhou Medical University, Xuzhou, Jiangsu, 221004, China.
² Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430030, China.
³ Department of Pediatrics, Affiliated Hospital of Xuzhou Medical University, Xuzhou, Jiangsu, 221004, China.
⁴ Center for Medical Statistics and Data Analysis, Xuzhou Medical University, Xuzhou, Jiangsu, 221004, China.
⁵ Key Laboratory of Human Genetics and Environmental Medicine, Xuzhou Medical University, Xuzhou, Jiangsu, 221004, China.
⁶ Key Laboratory of Environment and Health, Xuzhou Medical University, Xuzhou, Jiangsu, 221004, China.
⁷ Engineering Research Innovation Center of Biological Data Mining and Healthcare Transformation, Xuzhou Medical University, Xuzhou, Jiangsu, 221004, China.

Abstract

Background: To explore the long-term relationship between maternal smoking during pregnancy and early childhood growth in the UK Biobank cohort.

Methods: To estimate the effect of maternal smoking during pregnancy on offspring height and body size at ten years old, we performed binary logistic analyses and reported odds ratios (OR) as well as 95% confidence intervals (95%CIs). We also implemented the cross-contextual comparison study to examine whether such influence could be repeatedly observed among three different ethnicities in the UK Biobank cohort (n = 22,140 for White, n = 7094 for South Asian, and n = 5000 for Black). In particular, we conducted the sibling cohort study in White sibling cohort (n = 9953 for height and n = 7239 for body size) to control for unmeasured familial confounders.

Results: We discovered that children whose mothers smoked during pregnancy had greater risk of being shorter or plumper at age ten in the full UK Biobank White cohort, with 15.3% (95% CIs: 13.0%∼17.7%) higher risk for height and 32.4% (95%CIs: 29.5%∼35.4%) larger risk for body size. Similar associations were identified in the South Asian and Black ethnicities. These associations were robust and remained significant in the White sibling cohort (12.6% [95%CIs: 5.0%∼20.3%] for height and 36.1% [95%CIs: 26.3%∼45.9%] for body size) after controlling for family factors.

Conclusion: This study robustly confirms that maternal smoking during pregnancy can promote height deficit and obesity for offspring at ten years old. Our findings strongly encourage mothers to quit smoking during pregnancy for improving growth and development of offspring.

Keywords: Body size; Childhood growth; Cross-contextual comparison study; Height; Maternal smoking during pregnancy; Sibling design.