Growth and Life Course Health Development

Abstract

Physical growth is an emergent process integrating a complex network of social, biological, and environmental interactions. The global diversity of body shapes and sizes reflects developmental plasticity in response to environmental exposures, both advantageous and adverse, and depicts an evolutionarily robust strategy for species’ survival. Epidemiologic surveillance efforts demonstrate that early life skeletal growth and body composition trajectories are associated with and predict adult chronic disease risks. Both human and animal studies have provided an evidentiary base for the physiological mechanisms by which differences in growth processes manifest as cell- and organ-level changes that influence disease susceptibility across the life course. This chapter leverages a systems biology approach to describe macro- and micropathways affecting growth from a global perspective, reflecting on auxology’s place in theoretical frameworks that help us to understanding past, present, and future health trends. Methodological challenges that face the field are considered, and recommendations to guide future research and policy efforts are offered with the aim of advancing the science of growth biology and its contributions to life course health development.

Comparison of Infant Length Measurements Using Tape Measure Versus Length Board

“…7 Stunted linear growth is associated with an increased risk of adverse outcomes, 1 poor cognitive development, 8,9 and overall poor productivity in adulthood. 5…”

Advancing human health in the decade ahead: pregnancy as a key window for discovery

“…Importantly, fetal growth is saltatory, not steady. 22,23 Deciphering normal fetal growth requires deep understanding of cell differentiation and the individual, temporal growth patterns in response to environmental influences. These may perturb organ growth trajectories, such as those expressed in growth plate biology, where cell differentiation defines bone elongation.…”

Life Course Research Agenda (LCRA), Version 1.0

“…Do certain key factors act as "triggers," setting in motion a cascade of future biological response patterns? Biological conditioning processes can range from the exposure to a specific nutrient like folate and its influence on epigenetic methylation based on availability in indigenous diets (see Herman and Taylor Baer 2017) to the role that different patterns of sleep and sleep duration have on cycling of neuroendocrine hormones that serve to prime other factors related to growth, metabolism, and the biological underpinning of behavioral response systems (see Mummert et al 2017;Hawkins et al 2017).…”

“…However, this simple characterization of the distribution of risk and protective factors in lowversus high-income communities obscures more complex and dynamic processes, a high degree of variability, and other deeper dynamics that might not be readily apparent and need to be considered and measured more directly. As the chapter in this volume by Mummert et al (2017) points out, the ecosystems in which today's children are developing are novel when conceptualized across evolutionary timescales, with our manmade environments posing additional biological and behavioral challenges to developing humans that can both mediate and exacerbate other forms of more readily observable and measurable adversity.…”