Sydney, Aug 3 (Inditop.com) Female twins who are small at birth have a greater likelihood of being obese as adults, according to a new study.
Scientists in Britain and Otago University (OU) in Australia found that twin girls with a lower birth weight were found in later life to have higher amounts of fat compared to lean body tissue than the twins who were heavier at birth. They conducted a study of 3,170 female twins aged 18 to 80 in Britain.
Conversely, those who were heavier at birth had a higher ratio of lean body mass to fat mass once in adulthood.
“A girl who is a twin, with a birth weight of 2.5 kg, will have around 500 grams less fat in adulthood than a twin girl with a smaller birth weight of 1.5 kg,” said Paula Skidmore, nutritionist at OU.
The average weight at birth for a twin girl is 2.5 kg. All the twins had their adult weight and total fat measured using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry, and were asked to recall their birth weights for the purposes of the study.
Skidmore said the higher proportions of fat in adulthood for these smaller babies was not drastically different when compared with their adult counterparts who were larger at birth.
The differences in adulthood for smaller babies amounted to hundreds of grams rather than kilograms of fat mass when measured against the heavier twins.
“But we can definitely say the twins who were smaller as babies had a propensity to accumulate more fat throughout the life cycle, whereas those with a higher birth weight had a more favourable body composition in adulthood,” Skidmore said.
These findings are slated for publication in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
