Cord blood leptin may be biomarker of future adiposity risk during childhood: Study

The study, published in Pediatric Obesity revealed that CB leptin is positively associated with childhood and neonatal adiposity and child leptin levels, independent of maternal body mass index (BMI) and maternal hyperglycemia.

"The study's major finding was the significant positive relationship between cord blood leptin and adiposity later in childhood, which has not been consistently observed in previous studies," the researchers reported.

Leptin is a pleiotropic hormone that is mainly produced by adipose tissue, but also by skeletal muscle, the liver and the placenta. Cord blood leptin is positively associated with adiposity at birth, but there is no clarity on its association with child adiposity. Therefore, Sean DeLacey, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois, USA, and colleagues aimed to expand upon current evidence and describe the relationship between CB leptin and later childhood adiposity.

They hypothesized that CB leptin is positively associated with peripubertal childhood adiposity measures including childhood leptin.

For this purpose, the researchers measured leptin in 986 CB and 931 childhood stored samples from a prospective birth cohort. Adiposity measures were collected at birth and the mean age was 11.5 years.

The associations between log-transformed CB leptin and neonatal and childhood adiposity measures were evaluated as continuous and categorical variables, respectively using linear and logistic regression analyses.

The study revealed the following findings:

• CB leptin was positively associated with neonatal and childhood adiposity.
• Childhood associations were attenuated when adjusted for maternal BMI and glucose but remained statistically significant for childhood body fat percentage (β = 1.15%), body fat mass (β = 0.69 kg), sum of skin-folds (β = 1.77 mm), overweight/obesity (OR = 1.21), log-transformed child serum leptin (β = 0.13), obesity (OR = 1.31) and body fat percentage >85th percentile (OR = 1.38).
• Positive associations between newborn adiposity measures and CB leptin confirmed previous reports.

"We found that CB leptin was positively associated with neonatal fat mass, child leptin levels and multiple adiposity measures in the peripubertal age period," the researchers wrote. "The magnitude of this association was small but was robust to adjustment for maternal pregnancy factors."

"Future studies can work upon current knowledge by elucidating the mechanism by which higher neonatal leptin may affect future adiposity, including continuing to evaluate leptin and leptin receptor gene expression as it relates to future adiposity," they concluded.

Reference:

DeLacey, S., Gurra, M., Arzu, J., Lowe, L. P., Lowe, W. L., Scholtens, D. M., & Josefson, J. L. Leptin and adiposity measures from birth to later childhood: Findings from the Hyperglycemia and Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes Follow-Up Study. Pediatric Obesity, e13087. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijpo.13087