A negative correlation between birth weight and subsequent blood pressure has been reported in some studies. We analysed the effect of birth weight and pubertal development and several pre- and postnatal factors on subsequent blood pressure among 2500 children and adolescents in a nine-year follow-up study with three surveys.
The age- and weight-adjusted correlations between birth weight and systolic blood pressure varied from -0.04 to -0.12 in each survey. A somewhat stronger relation was found among the pre- and postpubertal females and among the postpubertal males (partial correlation coefficients -0.12 to -0.15) in the last survey. The decrease in the adjusted mean systolic BP was about 2 mmHg when birth weight increased from the lowest to the highest tertile. Other factors affecting systolic blood pressure were current age (mean change up to 1.76 mmHg per year) and weight (mean change up to 0.59 mmHg per kg), the duration of breast feeding over 3 months (mean change up to -6.54 mmHg) and a birth rank order over four (mean change up to 4.99 mmHg) presented as the mean difference from the baseline. According to the multiple regression analysis, a history of mother's high blood pressure during pregnancy (p<0.05) predicted future blood pressure as reliably as birth weight.
