The Relationship of Early-Life Adversity With Adulthood Weight and Cardiometabolic Health Status in the 1946 National Survey of Health and Development.

Objective: Evidence linking early-life adversity with an adverse cardiometabolic profile in adulthood is equivocal. This study investigates early-life adversity in relation to weight and cardiometabolic health status at ages 60 to 64 years.

Methods: We included 1059 individuals from the 1946 National Survey of Health and Development. Data on adversity between ages 0 to 15 years were used to create a cumulative childhood psychosocial adversity score and a socioeconomic adversity score. Cardiometabolic and weight/height data collected at ages 60 to 64 years were used to create four groups: metabolically healthy normal weight, metabolically unhealthy normal weight, metabolically healthy overweight/obese, and metabolically unhealthy overweight/obese. Associations between the two exposure scores and weight/health status were examined using multinomial logistic regression, with adjustment for sex and age at the outcome visit.

Results: Sixty-two percent of normal-weight individuals were metabolically healthy, whereas only 34% of overweight/obese individuals were metabolically healthy. In a mutually adjusted model including both exposure scores, a psychosocial score of ≥3 (compared with 0) was associated with increased risk of being metabolically unhealthy (compared with healthy) in both normal-weight adults (relative risk = 2.49; 95% confidence interval = 0.87-7.13) and overweight/obese adults (1.87; 0.96-3.61). However, the socioeconomic adversity score was more strongly related to metabolic health status in overweight/obese adults (1.60; 0.98-2.60) than in normal-weight adults (0.95; 0.46-1.96).

Conclusions: Independently of socioeconomic adversity, psychosocial adversity in childhood may be associated with a poor cardiometabolic health profile, in both normal-weight and overweight/obese adults.