Ken Smith - University of Utah
Big and Small, Early and Late: A Family-Based Study of the Health Effects of Preterm Births and Birthweight
Date: 10/09/2014 (Thu)
Time: 3:30pm- 5:00pm
Location: Seminar will be held on-site: Gross Hall - 103
Organizer: Ken Land
Meeting Schedule: Login or email the organizer to schedule a meeting.
All meetings will be held in the same location as the seminar unless otherwise noted.
9:00am - Hotel shuttle to Gross Hall
9:30am - OPEN
10:00am - Joseph Lariscy
10:30am - Nick Ingwersen
11:00am - Sidra Goldman-Mellor
11:40am - Lunch with Eric Stallard and Anatoliy Yashin
1:15pm - Open for Students (Emma Zang)
1:45pm - Elizabeth Frankenberg
2:15pm - Jessica Ho
2:45pm - Amar Hamoudi
3:15pm - Prepare for seminar
3:30pm - Seminar Presentation (3:30pm to 5:00pm)
6:00pm - Dinner - Angie O'Rand
Additional Comments: ABSTRACT: The contribution of preterm birth and birthweight extremes to a child’s health risks, ranging from infant mortality to later onset diseases in adulthood, has been examined extensively. The direct causal relationship between gestational age, birthweight, and later life health has been questioned because they may be measures of confounding factors that are related both to birth characteristics and to later life health. With a few exceptions, this large body of work does not consider the patterns of birthweight and preterm births within a family. Additionally, the subsequent parental health impacts of bearing low-birth weight or preterm children have not been examined as extensively. To further examine the hypotheses that prematurity and birthweight adversely affect children’s and parent’s risk of short- and long-term health outcomes and mortality, we adopt a family-based model where we (1) compare the health outcomes of siblings throughout the life course based on differences in their gestational age and birthweight and (2) examine how gestational age and birthweight of offspring alter mortality risks of the parents. In addition, we consider how a family pattern of longevity (as a measure of familial robustness) may modify the adverse later-life health effects of gestational age and birthweight among the offspring. Key outcomes for the offspring are: infant mortality, fertility, cancer incidence, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and adult all-cause and cause-specific mortality. These hypotheses are tested using data from nearly half a million births identified in the Utah Population Database for children born from 1947-1969 who have been linked to subsequent medical records and have been organized into families. We include, for a subset of the sample, additional and unique cardiovascular outcomes based on deep phenotyping of the offspring from a clinical cohort who underwent coronary catheterization.