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Small might be beautiful, but not for the heart. A new study has shown that small babies and malnourished infants risk developing heart disease in later life. Improving the health and nutrition status of infants and babies could help reduce heart disease later in life, according to a new research. Earlier medical studies have proved that small babies have a higher risk of developing heart disease, as they grow older. But scientists at the National Public Health Institute in Helsinki and the University of Southampton in England said better nutrition before and in the first year after birth could help to reduce the risk. "In our view the cornerstone of any policy to reduce the most common cause of death in the world, which is coronary heart disease, is to improve the nutrition and growth of babies before and after birth and to prevent babies who were thin at birth from becoming overweight in childhood," Professor David Barker, an epidemiologist at Southampton, said. In a wide study Barker and his Finnish colleagues were able to examine the infant and childhood growth patterns of 357 men who later developed or died from heart disease. "It's never before been possible to see how men who get coronary heart disease grew as children," Barker explained. All the men in the study had been born between 1934 and 1944 in the Helsinki University Hospital and had their growth patterns had been monitored from birth until they reached 12 years of age. The researchers discovered that men who died from heart disease grew very differently from other children when they were boys. All the heart disease sufferers had been born small. |
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