Mother’s height determines child’s health: Study

The research at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) has found a link between mother’s height and health of her children.

“Maternal height can be a useful marker for characterising inter-generational linkages in health because adult height reflects a mother’s health stock accumulated through her life course,especially the social and environmental exposures in her early childhood,” says S V Subramanian,Associate Professor,HSPH Department of Society,Human Development and Health.

“Although a few studies have shown associations between maternal height and mortality and stunting,studies conducted in India to date have investigated only the association between maternal height and preterm birth and low birth weight,” Subramanian adds.

However medical practitioners in the country do not agree to the finding.

“Height is always biologically linked. If the mother’s height is short then child’s height will most probably be short. One can derive many hypothesis but there is no biological link between mother’s health and child’s height,” says Dr R K Lalwani,General Physician,Rockland Hospital.

Orthopaedic P K Dave says,”Mother’s health can have some impact on child’s health but not health.”

The authors of the study used data from India’s 2005-2006 National Family Health Survey (NFHS) conducted and released in 2008 where target population was children aged 0 to 59 months,women aged 15 to 49 years and men aged 15 to 54 years.

The research found out that a mother’s low height was associated with increased health risk for her children.

In the data,one-third of the children had mothers in the middle height category (150-154.9 cm),with 7.6 per cent and 12.2 per cent of children having mothers in the tallest (160 cm) and the shortest (145 cm) categories,respectively,in the mortality data sets.

“Children born to mothers who were less than 145 cm in height were 1.71 times more likely to die compared with mothers who were at least 160 cm in height,” says Subramanian

“The research thus clearly indicates that height below 145 cm is certainly not good. In general taller the better,” he adds.

The research also brought forward the point that a 1 cm increase in maternal height was associated with a three per cent decreased risk of child mortality,with a decrease in relative risk for underweight,stunting and wasting.

Short maternal height has been shown to be a risk factor for low birth weight and intra uterine growth retardation. Low birth weight,meanwhile,has been shown to be associated with subsequent risk of mortality,anaemia,stunting,wasting and underweight.

“On average,maternal height among children who did not survive the first 5 years of life was 150.5 cm,while for those who survived it was 151.6 cm,” Subramanian says.

But the height is generally considered to be genetically transferred so does it control maternal health?

“Yes stature indeed has a genetic component,” says Subramanian “but to say that only genetics determines height is a myth. Over the decades population height has been increasing. The Dutch at the turn of the century were amongst the shortest and now are the tallest.”

He adds “It is very clear that nutrition during the first two years of the child is key to avoid stunting and that allows the child to grow to its fullest genetic potential. In the first two years,genes do not play much role. Genes comes into play via the growth spurts that children experience through their childhood and adolescent years.”