RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Associations of prenatal and postnatal growth with insulin-like growth factor-I levels in pre-adolescence JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 144493 DO 10.1101/144493 A1 R Arathimos A1 C Macdonald-Wallis A1 CJ Bull A1 JMP Holly A1 E Oken A1 MS Kramer A1 N Gusina A1 N Bogdanovich A1 K Vilchuck A1 R Patel A1 R M Martin A1 K Tilling YR 2017 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/06/23/144493.abstract AB Background Rapid pre- and postnatal growth have been associated with later life adverse health outcomes, which could implicate (as a mediator) circulating insulin-like-growth-factor I (IGF-I), an important regulator of growth. We investigated associations of prenatal (birth weight and length) and postnatal growth in infancy and childhood with circulating IGF-I measured at 11.5 years of age.Methods We analysed 11.5-year follow-up data from 17,046 Belarusian children who participated in the Promotion of Breastfeeding Intervention Trial (PROBIT) since birth.Results Complete data were available for 5422 boys and 4743 girls (60%). We stratified the analyses by sex, as there was evidence of interaction between growth and sex in their associations with IGF-I. Weight and length/height velocity during childhood were positively associated with IGF-I at 11.5 years; associations increased with age at growth assessment and were stronger for length/height gain than for weight gain. The change in internal run-normalized IGF-I z-score at 11.5 years was 0.038 (95% CI -0.004,0.080) per standard deviation (SD) increase in length gain at 0-3 months amongst girls and 0.025 (95% CI - 0.011,0.060) amongst boys, increasing to 0.336 (95% CI 0.281,0.391;) and 0.211 (95% CI 0.165,0.256) for girls and boys, respectively, for growth during 6.5-11.5 years.Conclusion Postnatal growth velocities in childhood are positively associated with levels of circulating IGF-I in pre-adolescents. Future studies should focus on assessing whether IGF-I is on the causal pathway between early growth and later health outcomes, such as cancer and diabetes.