Trajectories of growth in early childhood and body composition and cardiometabolic risk markers in Ethiopian children

Children

Rasmus Wibæk Christensen 

PhD thesis

Chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease are among the leading causes of death and disability worldwide. The burden of these diseases is falling disproportionately on low and middle-income countries who are currently experiencing rapid changes in lifestyle patterns towards western diets and sedentary behaviours.

This results in growing numbers of children with obesity, but at the same time, these countries have continued high levels of undernutrition. Studies have shown that your nutritional status and growth in fetal life and early childhood are important factors for your later risk of obesity, diabetes and heart disease, and it has been suggested that these diseases may start to develop already in childhood. However, knowledge about these relationships in populations from low-income countries is lacking.

The overall aim of this thesis was to study how weight, body mass index, fat and muscle growth in the first years of life affect fat, muscle and several diabetes and heart disease related blood markers in five-year-old children from urban Ethiopia.

2019, 224 pages.

Funding: Innovation Fund Denmark, Danish Diabetes Academy and University of Copenhagen.

Time

6 November 2019, 13:00

Place

Festauditoriet 1-01, Bülowsvej 17. 1870 Frederiksberg C

Opponents 

Associate Professor Camilla Trab Damsgaard (chair), Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Professor Tim Cole, Population Policy and Practice Programme, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, London, UK.

Professor, Consultant Henrik Boye Thybo Christesen, University of Southern Denmark.

Main supervisor

Professor Henrik Friis, Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Co-supervisor

Professor Jonathan Well, University College London GOS Institute of Child Health, London, UK.

Senior Scientist Gregers Stig Andersen, Steno Diabetes Center Copenhagen, Gentofte, Denmark.

Senior Scientist Dorte Vistisen, Steno Diabetes Center Copenhagen, Gentofte, Denmark.