Understanding the pathways between prenatal and postnatal factors and overweight outcomes in early childhood: a pooled analysis of seven cohorts

Published online: 3 April 2023BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Childhood overweight and obesity are influenced by a range of prenatal and postnatal factors. Few studies have explored the integrative pathways linking these factors and childhood overweight. This study aimed to elucidate the integrative pathways through which maternal pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI), infant birth weight, breastfeeding duration, and rapid weight gain (RWG) during infancy are associated with overweight outcomes in early childhood from ages 3 to 5 years. SUBJECTS/METHODS: Pooled data from seven Australian and New Zealand cohorts were used (n = 3572). Generalized structural equation modelling was used to examine direct and indirect associations of maternal pre-pregnancy BMI, infant birth weight, breastfeeding duration, and RWG during infancy with child overweight outcomes (BMI z-score and overweight status). RESULTS: Maternal pre-pregnancy BMI was directly associated with infant birth weight (β 0.01, 95%CI 0.01, 0.02), breastfeeding duration ≥6 months (OR 0.92, 95%CI 0.90, 0.93), child BMI z-score (β 0.03, 95%CI 0.03, 0.04) and overweight status (OR 1.07, 95%CI 1.06, 1.09) at ages 3-5 years. The association between maternal pre-pregnancy BMI and child overweight outcomes was partially mediated by infant birth weight, but not RWG. RWG in infancy exhibited the strongest direct association with child overweight outcomes (BMI z-score: β 0.72, 95%CI 0.65, 0.79; overweight status: OR 4.49, 95%CI 3.61, 5.59). Infant birth weight was implicated in the indirect pathways of maternal pre-pregnancy BMI with RWG in infancy, breastfeeding duration, and child overweight outcomes. The associations between breastfeeding duration (≥6 months) and lower child overweight outcomes were fully mediated by RWG in infancy. CONCLUSIONS: Maternal pre-pregnancy BMI, infant birth weight, breastfeeding duration and RWG in infancy act in concert to influence early childhood overweight. Future overweight prevention interventions should target RWG in infancy, which showed the strongest association with childhood overweight; and maternal pre-pregnancy BMI, which was implicated in several pathways leading to childhood overweight.Miaobing Zheng, Kylie D. Hesketh, Peter Vuillermin, Jodie Dodd, Li Ming Wen, Louise A. Baur, Rachael Taylor, Rebecca Byrne, Seema Mihrshahi, David Burgner, Mimi L. K. Tang, and Karen J. Campbel

Bystander Exposure to Ultra-Low-Volume Insecticide Applications Used for Adult Mosquito Management

A popular and effective management option for adult mosquitoes is the use of insecticides applied by ultra-low-volume (ULV) equipment. However, there is a paucity of data on human dermal exposure to insecticides applied by this method. The objective of the current study was to estimate dermal exposures to the insecticide active ingredient permethrin using water- (Aqua-Reslin®) and oil-based (Permanone® 30-30) formulations with passive dosimetry. No significant differences in deposition of permethrin were observed between years, distance from the spray source, front or back of the body, or the placement of the patches on the body. However, exposure to Aqua-Reslin was significantly greater than Permanone 30-30 and average concentrations deposited on the body were 4.2 and 2.1 ng/cm2, respectively. The greater deposition of Aqua-Reslin is most likely due to the higher density of the water-based formulation which causes it to settle out faster than the lighter oil-based formulation of Permanone 30-30. The estimated average absorbed dermal exposure for permethrin from Aqua-Reslin and Permanone 30-30 was 0.00009 and 0.00005 mg/kg body weight, respectively. We also found that ground deposition of ULV insecticides can be used as a surrogate for estimating dermal exposure. The estimated exposures support the findings of previous risk assessments that exposure to ULV applications used for mosquito management are below regulatory levels of concern

Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results

Jet size dependence of single jet suppression in lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s(NN)) = 2.76 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Measurements of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions at the LHC provide direct sensitivity to the physics of jet quenching. In a sample of lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s) = 2.76 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of approximately 7 inverse microbarns, ATLAS has measured jets with a calorimeter over the pseudorapidity interval |eta| < 2.1 and over the transverse momentum range 38 < pT < 210 GeV. Jets were reconstructed using the anti-kt algorithm with values for the distance parameter that determines the nominal jet radius of R = 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5. The centrality dependence of the jet yield is characterized by the jet "central-to-peripheral ratio," Rcp. Jet production is found to be suppressed by approximately a factor of two in the 10% most central collisions relative to peripheral collisions. Rcp varies smoothly with centrality as characterized by the number of participating nucleons. The observed suppression is only weakly dependent on jet radius and transverse momentum. These results provide the first direct measurement of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions and complement previous measurements of dijet transverse energy imbalance at the LHC.Comment: 15 pages plus author list (30 pages total), 8 figures, 2 tables, submitted to Physics Letters B. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at http://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/HION-2011-02

Measurement of the cross section of high transverse momentum Z→bb̄ production in proton–proton collisions at √s = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This Letter reports the observation of a high transverse momentum Z→bb̄ signal in proton–proton collisions at √s=8 TeV and the measurement of its production cross section. The data analysed were collected in 2012 with the ATLAS detector at the LHC and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 19.5 fb−¹. The Z→bb̄ decay is reconstructed from a pair of b -tagged jets, clustered with the anti-ktkt jet algorithm with R=0.4R=0.4, that have low angular separation and form a dijet with pT>200 GeVpT>200 GeV. The signal yield is extracted from a fit to the dijet invariant mass distribution, with the dominant, multi-jet background mass shape estimated by employing a fully data-driven technique that reduces the dependence of the analysis on simulation. The fiducial cross section is determined to be σZ→bb¯fid=2.02±0.20 (stat.) ±0.25 (syst.)±0.06 (lumi.) pb=2.02±0.33 pb, in good agreement with next-to-leading-order theoretical predictions

Measurement of the branching ratio Γ(Λb⁰ → ψ(2S)Λ0)/Γ(Λb⁰ → J/ψΛ0) with the ATLAS detector

An observation of the $\Lambda_b^0 \rightarrow \psi(2S) \Lambda^0$ decay and a comparison of its branching fraction with that of the $\Lambda_b^0 \rightarrow J/\psi \Lambda^0$ decay has been made with the ATLAS detector in proton--proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=8\,$TeV at the LHC using an integrated luminosity of $20.6\,$fb$^{-1}$. The $J/\psi$ and $\psi(2S)$ mesons are reconstructed in their decays to a muon pair, while the $\Lambda^0\rightarrow p\pi^-$ decay is exploited for the $\Lambda^0$ baryon reconstruction. The $\Lambda_b^0$ baryons are reconstructed with transverse momentum $p_{\rm T}>10\,$GeV and pseudorapidity $|\eta|<2.1$. The measured branching ratio of the $\Lambda_b^0 \rightarrow \psi(2S) \Lambda^0$ and $\Lambda_b^0 \rightarrow J/\psi \Lambda^0$ decays is $\Gamma(\Lambda_b^0 \rightarrow \psi(2S)\Lambda^0)/\Gamma(\Lambda_b^0 \rightarrow J/\psi\Lambda^0) = 0.501\pm 0.033 ({\rm stat})\pm 0.019({\rm syst})$, lower than the expectation from the covariant quark model.Comment: 12 pages plus author list (28 pages total), 5 figures, 1 table, published on Physics Letters B 751 (2015) 63-80. All figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/BPHY-2013-08

Search for strong gravity in multijet final states produced in pp collisions at √s=13 TeV using the ATLAS detector at the LHC

A search is conducted for new physics in multijet final states using 3.6 inverse femtobarns of data from proton-proton collisions at √s = 13TeV taken at the CERN Large Hadron Collider with the ATLAS detector. Events are selected containing at least three jets with scalar sum of jet transverse momenta (HT) greater than 1TeV. No excess is seen at large HT and limits are presented on new physics: models which produce final states containing at least three jets and having cross sections larger than 1.6 fb with HT > 5.8 TeV are excluded. Limits are also given in terms of new physics models of strong gravity that hypothesize additional space-time dimensions

Operation and performance of the ATLAS semiconductor tracker

The semiconductor tracker is a silicon microstrip detector forming part of the inner tracking system of the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. The operation and performance of the semiconductor tracker during the first years of LHC running are described. More than 99% of the detector modules were operational during this period, with an average intrinsic hit efficiency of (99.74±0.04)%. The evolution of the noise occupancy is discussed, and measurements of the Lorentz angle, δ-ray production and energy loss presented. The alignment of the detector is found to be stable at the few-micron level over long periods of time. Radiation damage measurements, which include the evolution of detector leakage currents, are found to be consistent with predictions and are used in the verification of radiation background simulations

Measurement of the correlation between flow harmonics of different order in lead-lead collisions at √sNN = 2.76 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Correlations between the elliptic or triangular flow coefficients vm (m=2 or 3) and other flow harmonics vn (n=2 to 5) are measured using √sNN=2.76 TeV Pb+Pb collision data collected in 2010 by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 7 μb−1. The vm−vn correlations are measured in midrapidity as a function of centrality, and, for events within the same centrality interval, as a function of event ellipticity or triangularity defined in a forward rapidity region. For events within the same centrality interval, v3 is found to be anticorrelated with v2 and this anticorrelation is consistent with similar anticorrelations between the corresponding eccentricities, ε2 and ε3. However, it is observed that v4 increases strongly with v2, and v5 increases strongly with both v2 and v3. The trend and strength of the vm−vn correlations for n=4 and 5 are found to disagree with εm−εn correlations predicted by initial-geometry models. Instead, these correlations are found to be consistent with the combined effects of a linear contribution to vn and a nonlinear term that is a function of v22 or of v2v3, as predicted by hydrodynamic models. A simple two-component fit is used to separate these two contributions. The extracted linear and nonlinear contributions to v4 and v5 are found to be consistent with previously measured event-plane correlations

Search for H→γγ produced in association with top quarks and constraints on the Yukawa coupling between the top quark and the Higgs boson using data taken at 7 TeV and 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

A search is performed for Higgs bosons produced in association with top quarks using the diphoton decay mode of the Higgs boson. Selection requirements are optimized separately for leptonic and fully hadronic final states from the top quark decays. The dataset used corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 4.5 fb−14.5 fb−1 of proton–proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and 20.3 fb−1 at 8 TeV recorded by the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. No significant excess over the background prediction is observed and upper limits are set on the tt¯H production cross section. The observed exclusion upper limit at 95% confidence level is 6.7 times the predicted Standard Model cross section value. In addition, limits are set on the strength of the Yukawa coupling between the top quark and the Higgs boson, taking into account the dependence of the tt¯H and tH cross sections as well as the H→γγ branching fraction on the Yukawa coupling. Lower and upper limits at 95% confidence level are set at −1.3 and +8.0 times the Yukawa coupling strength in the Standard Model