Is early exposure to violence at home linked to boys’ later weight patterns?

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Researchers investigated how growing up in a violent home related to body mass index (BMI) trajectories in an adolescent cohort followed longitudinally from 1996 to 2003–4. The study included 6,043 girls and 4,934 boys who were aged 9–14 in 1996, reported their height and weight at least twice, and whose mothers completed intimate partner violence (IPV) questions in the 2001 Nurses’ Health Study.

The main exposure was a first experience of family violence in early childhood (ages 0–5) or later childhood (ages 6–11), determined from the mother’s year-specific exposure to IPV and each participant’s birth year. Mothers’ reports of IPV were ascertained using the Abuse Assessment Screen. Researchers used general growth mixture modelling to estimate four BMI trajectory groups from age-specific BMI at ages 12–20.

Four trajectories were identified separately for girls and boys: healthy growth, healthy to obese, steady overweight, and consistently obese. After adjustment for confounders, boys raised in violent homes before age 5 had higher odds than boys not exposed to violence at home of being in the consistently obese group (OR 2.0; 95% CI 1.2–3.5) and the steady overweight group (OR 1.4; 95% CI 1.1–1.9). Girls raised in violent homes were more likely to be in the steady overweight group, but the association did not remain statistically significant after adjustment for confounding.

The researchers concluded that exposure to domestic violence was linked to a risk of unhealthy weight trajectories during adolescence in boys. They suggested that detrimental effects of exposure to a domestic violence environment may take root in the first few years of development for boys.