Women exposed to preeclampsia during fetal life have lower risk of breast cancer, compared with unexposed women, possibly through fetal programming. Hypothetically, preeclampsia exposure could affect well-known risk factors for breast cancer, such as pubertal development or adult anthropometry. Women born in a defined geographic area of Sweden from 1973 through 1978, with verified preeclampsia exposure (n ϭ 230) and nonexposure (n ϭ 359) during fetal life, answered questions about anthropometric measures, smoking, parity, and age at menarche in a telephone interview in early adulthood. Compared with unexposed offspring, female offspring of women who had preeclampsia were lighter and shorter for gestational age, but in young adulthood there were no differences in height, body mass index, waist-to-hip ratio, or age at menarche. When analyzing the effects of other maternal and fetal characteristics, the results indicate that approximately 50% of the variance in final height was explained by parental heights and birth length for gestational age. Young-adult body mass index was weakly associated with maternal body mass index, maternal smoking, and birth weight for gestational age, which together explained 12% of the variance. Neither of the assessed maternal or fetal characteristics were significantly associated with age at menarche or waist-tohip ratio. These data indicate that neither adult anthropometry nor age at menarche is in the causal pathway between intrauterine preeclampsia exposure and the reduced risk of breast cancer. Women exposed to preeclampsia during their fetal life are reported to have decreased risk of breast cancer (1, 2). Other well-known risk factors for breast cancer are early menarche and tall stature (3, 4). Both the association between preeclampsia and breast cancer and the association between early menarche or tall stature and breast cancer have been hypothesized to be caused by intrauterine estrogen exposure (5-7). Therefore, one reasonable hypothesis is that preeclampsia exposure could affect well-known risk factors for breast cancer, such as pubertal development or adult anthropometry, which in turn are important for breast cancer development.Birth characteristics and adult central obesity are also reported to be associated with breast cancer, coronary heart disease, insulin resistance, and hypertension (8 -13), but whether intrauterine exposure to preeclampsia influences the adult fat distribution of growth-restricted individuals is presently not known.To better understand the biologic pathway for how the intrauterine environment might influence adult morbidity, we assessed the effects of preeclampsia exposure and birth characteristics on known risk factors for breast cancer, such as final height, difference from target height, BMI, waist-to-hip ratio, and age at menarche.
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