NNIW96: Quality Of Growth, Body Composition And Longer Term Metabolic Outcomes

Research suggests young adults born preterm are at higher risk of cardiometabolic complications than full-term adults. Preterm men had shown to have more abdominal adipose tissue, more hepatic lipid content and significantly increased blood pressure. Further research suggests adults born preterm are more likely to have ischaemic heart disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome and a reduced lifespan. The factors influencing Infant adiposity include sex, ethnicity, birth gestational age, breast or formula feeding, protein intake, maternal adiposity and gestational diabetes. Preterm babies, when they’d reached the age of full term, looked very thin but in fact they had more internal-abdominal adipose tissue and liver fat. In this video, Neena Modi, Professor of Neonatal Medicine at Imperial College London, discusses body composition as a biomarker of metabolic risk in preterm infants.