Abstract P204: Joint Association Between Birth Weight At Term And Later Life Adherence To A Healthy Lifestyle With Risk Of Hypertension

Objective: to prospectively assesse the joint association between birth weight and established lifestyle risk factors in adulthood with incident hypertension, and to quantity decompose the attributing effects to birth weight only, to adulthood lifestyle only and to their interaction. Methods: We followed 52,114 women from the Nurses9 Health Study II without hypercholesterolemia, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, prehypertension and hypertension at baseline (1991-2011). Women born preterm, of a multiple pregnancy, or who were missing birth weight data were excluded. Unhealthy adulthood lifestyle was defined by compiling status scores of body mass index (BMI), physical activity, alcohol consumption, the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet, and the use of nonnarcotic analgesics. Results: We documented 12,588 incident cases of hypertension during 20 years of follow-up. The risk of hypertension associated with a combination of low birth weight at term and unhealthy lifestyle factors (RR 1.95; 95%CI: 1.83-2.07) was more than the addition of the risk associated with each individual factor, indicating a significant interaction on an additive scale ( P interaction Conclusion: Our findings suggest that a combination of a healthy birth weight and a healthy adulthood lifestyle could prevent 66% of the cases of hypertension in this population, and the combined effects of lower birth weight at term and unhealthy lifestyle with the risk of hypertension are greater than additive.