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Upper arm length and knee height are associated with diabetes in the middle-aged and elderly: evidence from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 May 2022

Bingjie He
Affiliation:
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Peking University, 38 Xueyuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100191, People’s Republic of China
Zhengyang Li
Affiliation:
Department of Endocrinology, Shandong Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong First Medical University, Huaiyin District, Jinan, People’s Republic of China
Lu Xu
Affiliation:
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Peking University, 38 Xueyuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100191, People’s Republic of China
Lili Liu
Affiliation:
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Peking University, 38 Xueyuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100191, People’s Republic of China
Shengfeng Wang*
Affiliation:
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Peking University, 38 Xueyuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100191, People’s Republic of China
Siyan Zhan*
Affiliation:
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Peking University, 38 Xueyuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100191, People’s Republic of China Research Center of Clinical Epidemiology, Peking University Third Hospital, Haidian District, Beijing, People’s Republic of China Center for Intelligent Public Health, Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Peking University, Beijing, People’s Republic of China
Yongfeng Song*
Affiliation:
Department of Endocrinology, Shandong Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong First Medical University, Huaiyin District, Jinan, People’s Republic of China Shandong Institute of Endocrine & Metabolic Diseases, Shandong First Medical University, Jinan, People’s Republic of China
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Abstract

Objective:

To determine if limb lengths, as markers of early life environment, are associated with the risk of diabetes in China.

Design:

We performed a cohort analysis using data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), and multivariable-adjusted Cox proportional hazard regression models were used to examine the associations between baseline limb lengths and subsequent risk of diabetes.

Setting:

The CHARLS, 2011–2018.

Participants:

The study confined the eligible subject to 10 711 adults aged over 45 years from the CHARLS.

Results:

During a mean follow-up period of 6·13 years, 1358 cases of incident diabetes were detected. When controlling for potential covariates, upper arm length was inversely related to diabetes (hazard ratio (HR) 0·95, 95 % CI (0·91, 0·99), P = 0·028), and for every 1-cm difference in knee height, the risk of diabetes decreased by about 4 % (HR 0·96, 95 % CI (0·93, 0·99), P = 0·023). The association between upper arm length and diabetes was only significant among females while the association between knee height and diabetes was only significant among males. In analyses stratified by BMI, significant associations between upper arm length/knee height and diabetes only existed among those who were underweight (HR 0·91, 95 % CI (0·83, 1·00), P = 0·049, HR 0·92, 95 % CI (0·86, 0·99), P = 0·031).

Conclusions:

Inverse associations were observed between upper arm length, knee height and the risk for diabetes development in a large Asian population, suggesting early life environment, especially infant nutritional status, may play an important role in the determination of future diabetes risk.

Information

Type
Research Paper
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Nutrition Society
Figure 0

Table 1 Baseline characteristics of study subjects subdivided by diabetes outcome

Figure 1

Table 2 Incidence of diabetes during the follow-up

Figure 2

Table 3 HR (95 % CI) of incident diabetes for upper arm length and knee height, adjusted for possible explanatory and confounding factors

Figure 3

Table 4 Association of upper arm length/knee height with development of diabetes according to subgroups of various variables

Figure 4

Fig. 1 Hazard ratios (HR) and 95 % CI for the risk of diabetes, by sex, age, BMI, hypertension status or diabetes status

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