Mom’s coffee (and tea, kombucha, and…) tied to height in kids

Researchers found that children whose mothers consumed caffeine-containing products at significantly higher rates during pregnancy were shorter than those whose mothers consumed the least amount of caffeine.

Two prospective follow-up cohorts with a total of about 2,400 children reported that the children of the women with the highest intakes were, on average, 1.5 to 2.2 cm (0.6 to 0.9 in) shorter at 7 to 8 years of age. Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Bethesda, Maryland, and colleagues.

There was also an inverse, but weaker, relationship with child weight. described in JAMA network openwith no clear association with body mass index (BMI) values.

Gleason and colleagues cautioned against jumping to the conclusion that mothers-to-be should stop drinking coffee in the morning. wrote, and this study did not support previous suggestions that fetal exposure to caffeine increases the risk of subsequent obesity.

At the same time, however, the researchers noted that the “approximately 2 cm height difference” was similar to what was seen in previous studies of maternal smoking during pregnancy. Actively discouraged by official guidelines (However, there are many more reasons than just the impact on a child’s growth).

The two cohorts analyzed in this study were an offshoot of the Environmental Impact Research Project called the Fetal Growth Research Project (ECHO-FGS) and the Collaborative Perinatal Project (CPP). The first was that a nonsmoking woman gave birth to her one infant, in all she had 788. The second had 1,622 females and offspring. A small fraction of the ECHO-FGS mothers were smokers, and the results were adjusted for plasma cotinine (a metabolite of nicotine) levels, taking into account first- and second-hand smoke exposure.

Importantly, maternal caffeine intake in both cohorts was measured by blood tests for caffeine and its metabolite paraxanthine. This is an important strength of this study, as long as it does not rely on women’s self-reports of caffeine-containing beverage intake. stratified into quantiles.

Children’s height, weight, and BMI results were measured regularly. Gleason and his colleagues reported them as largely normalized.”Ze Score” to adjust for your child’s expected age-related growth.

In the ECHO-FGS group, caffeine intake and children’s Ze Height scores were β = -0.21 in the 4th and 1st quartiles from 4 to 8 years (95% CI -0.41 to -0.02). Ze The scores translated to a difference of about 1.5 cm,” the researchers noted.

Comparing the 5th quantile to the 1st quantile, the CPP cohort showed a similar relationship, with a “widening gap by age 8,” they added. At age 4 years, the beta value was -0.16 (95% CI -0.31 to -0.01). reached -0.37 (95% CI -0.57 to -0.16) by age 8 years. When converted to height, there was a difference of 0.7 to 2.2 cm.

In most comparisons, increased exposure to caffeine was associated with weight loss. These reached statistical significance only in his ECHO-FGS, and only in his third caffeine quartile, not the fourth.

Previous studies have also noted that caffeine consumption by mothers reduces height and weight in children and increases height deficits. There was a concern that However, a new study showed that ECHO-FGS participants had “no evidence of overweight or obesity in any quartile.” CPP had some increase in overweight/obesity in the top two quintiles but did not reach significance.

It is questionable whether an average height deficit of less than 1 inch between 7 and 8 years is clinically significant. (Of course, some people are quite large, assuming a normal distribution, i.e. a symmetrical bell curve.) As for physical health outcomes, he probably isn’t unless there is a clear effect on BMI in these data. However, height is very important from a social and cultural point of view. If the deficit continues to rise into puberty, it can have a large impact, perhaps even increasing the risk of obesity, so the researchers call for further investigation.