Adverse childhood experiences and pre-pregnancy body mass index in the HUNT study: A population-based cohort study

Heidi Linn Sandsæter; Trine Tetlie Eik-Nes; Linn Okkenhaug Getz; Elisabeth Balstad Magnussen; Ottar Bjerkeset; Janet W Rich-Edwards; Julie Horn

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0285160

Adverse childhood experiences and pre-pregnancy body mass index in the HUNT study: A population-based cohort study

PLoS One. 2023 May 2;18(5):e0285160. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0285160. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Heidi Linn Sandsæter^{1

2}, Trine Tetlie Eik-Nes^{3

4}, Linn Okkenhaug Getz⁵, Elisabeth Balstad Magnussen^{6

7}, Ottar Bjerkeset^{8

9}, Janet W Rich-Edwards^{10

11}, Julie Horn^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Public Health and Nursing, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway.
² Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Levanger Hospital, Nord-Trøndelag Hospital Trust, Levanger, Norway.
³ Department of Neuromedicine and Movement Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway.
⁴ Stjørdal Community Mental Health Centre, Levanger Hospital, Levanger, Norway.
⁵ Department of Public Health and Nursing, General Practice Research Unit, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway.
⁶ Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, St. Olav's University Hospital, Trondheim, Norway.
⁷ Department of Clinical and Molecular Medicine, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway.
⁸ Faculty of Nursing and Health Sciences, Nord University, Levanger, Norway.
⁹ Department of Mental Health, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway.
¹⁰ Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, United States of America.
¹¹ Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Division of Women's Health and Connors Center for Women's Health and Gender Biology, Boston, MA, United States of America.

Abstract

Objective: Investigate the association between adverse childhood experiences and pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI) in a population-based cohort in Trøndelag county, Norway.

Materials and methods: We linked data from the third (2006-2008) or fourth (2017-2019) survey of the Trøndelag Health Study (HUNT) and the Medical Birth Registry of Norway for 6679 women. Multiple logistic regression models were used to examine the association between adverse childhood experiences and pre-pregnancy BMI. Adverse childhood experiences were self-reported in adulthood and included perceiving childhood as difficult, parental divorce, parental death, dysfunctional family environment, bad childhood memories and lack of support from a trusted adult. Pre-pregnancy BMI was derived from the Medical Birth Registry of Norway or BMI measurement from the HUNT survey conducted within 2 years prior to the woman's pregnancy.

Results: Perceiving childhood as difficult was associated with higher odds of pre-pregnancy underweight (OR 1.78, 95%CI 0.99-3.22) and obesity (OR 1.58, 95%CI 1.14-2.2). A difficult childhood was positively associated with obesity with an adjusted OR of 1.19, 95%CI 0.79-1.81 (class I obesity), 2.32, 95%CI 1.35-4.01 (class II obesity) and 4.62, 95%CI 2.0-10.65 (class III obesity). Parental divorce was positively associated obesity (OR 1.34, 95%CI 1.10-1.63). Bad childhood memories were associated with both overweight (OR 1.34, 95%CI 1.01-1.79) and obesity (OR 1.63, 95%CI 1.13-2.34). Parental death was not associated with pre-pregnancy BMI.

Conclusions: Childhood adversities were associated with pre-pregnancy BMI. Our results suggest that the positive associations between childhood adversities and pre-pregnancy obesity increased with increasing obesity level.

Copyright: © 2023 Sandsæter et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adult
Adverse Childhood Experiences*
Body Mass Index
Cohort Studies
Female
Humans
Obesity / complications
Obesity / epidemiology
Overweight / complications
Pregnancy
Risk Factors

Grants and funding

HLS and JH were both supported by the Liaison Committee for education, research and innovation in Central Norway. Grant number (HLS): 20/39645. Grant number (JH): 17/38297. https://helse-midt.no/samarbeidsorganet HLS was also supported by Nord-Trøndelag Hospital Trust, grant number: 2019/1311-36077/2019, https://hnt.no/ and The Norwegian Nurses Organization, grant number:20/0001, https://https://www.nsf.no/ The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.