A longitudinal study of growth in Newcastle upon Tyne adolescents

Abstract

White Newcastle upon Tyne schoolchildren born in 1962 were examined at approximately half-yearly intervals from 9 to 17 years of age. During the last year of compulsory education losses to follow-up became selective with respect to socio-economic background, and the results reported here are restricted to 564 boys and 669 girls seen regularly between the ages of 10 and 15 years at least. Newcastle adolescents were slightly shorter and lighter than the London children on whom Tanner's British Standards were based. The longitudinal pattern of skinfold changes in boys was different from that observed in girls. Differences in height attained between occupational groups were well established by the age of five years, and the same was true of differences between family-size groups for children with fathers in manual occupations. It is inferred that differences in height between occupational and family-size groups resulted more from differences in leg than in trunk length. At age 15, the correlations of height attained with maternal height were 0.42 and 0.43, and with birthweight 0.25 and 0.28, for boys and girls respectively. Adjustment, by regression, of heights attained for birthweight, age at peak height velocity and maternal height diminished differences between occupational and family-size groups. After such adjustment, heights significantly lower than average were found only among subjects with fathers in unskilled manual occupations and with large families. Among subjects with fathers in manual occupations, subscapular and triceps skinfolds and arm circumference decreased significantly with increasing family size.

Associations of height, leg length, and lung function with cardiovascular risk factors in the Midspan Family Study

“…Unlike previous analyses, 15 [23][24][25] we found no evidence that social class differences in height were in greater part attributable to leg length than trunk length. The associations of FEV 1 with leg length were slightly weaker than their relation with trunk length but were stronger than those we found reported in Caerphilly where we used a height adjusted measure of lung function.…”

Predictors of Age at Menarche in the Newcastle Thousand Families Study

“…However, a previous study of girls born in Newcastleupon-Tyne in 1962 did find significant associations between both birth order and socioeconomic status and menarcheal age (Billewicz et al, 1983). It is possible that socioeconomic status effects were relatively small in this cohort as a result of post-war rationing (Prynne et al, 1999;Wright & Parker, 2004).…”

“…Age at menarche is an important marker of reproductive maturation and has been shown to predict adult ovarian function (Apter, 1996;Windham et al, 2002) and risk for diseases in adulthood including breast cancer (Apter et al, 1989), rheumatoid arthritis (Karlson et al, 2004) and low bone mass (Ito et al, 1995). Previous studies have investigated associations between the timing of menarche and birth weight (Cooper et al, 1996;Persson et al, 1999;Adair, 2001;Romundstad et al, 2003;dos Santos Silva et al, 2004), prematurity (Bhargava et al, 1995), birth order (Malina et al, 1997;Apraiz, 1999;Padez, 2003), infant feeding practices (Novotny et al, 2003), childhood adiposity (dos Santos Silva et al, 2002;Anderson et al, 2003;Ersoy et al, 2004), acute and chronic illness (Khan et al, 1996;Rosenstock et al, 2000), stressful circumstances (Kim & Smith, 1998;Tahirovic, 1998) and socioeconomic status (Billewicz et al, 1983;Chavarro et al, 2004). However, these studies have produced inconsistent findings and have not considered all these factors in the same study population.…”

Leg Length Increase/Decrease in Japanese in the Latter Half of the 20th Century.

“…This means also that the variation of height in a population is more dependant on the variation of leg length than that of upper body height. This is verified by Billewicz et al (1983), who describe taller or shorter stature as dependant upon taller or shorter iliocristal height in their longitudinal growth study in Newcastle upon Tyne. In regard to the individ ual,absolute and relative leg length are variable throughout life.…”