A century of trends in adult human height

Being taller is associated with enhanced longevity, and higher education and earnings. We reanalysed 1472 population-based studies, with measurement of height on more than 18.6 million participants to estimate mean height for people born between 1896 and 1996 in 200 countries. The largest gain in adult height over the past century has occurred in South Korean women and Iranian men, who became 20.2 cm (95% credible interval 17.5-22.7) and 16.5 cm (13.3-19.7) taller, respectively. In contrast, there was little change in adult height in some sub-Saharan African countries and in South Asia over the century of analysis. The tallest people over these 100 years are men born in the Netherlands in the last quarter of 20th century, whose average heights surpassed 182.5 cm, and the shortest were women born in Guatemala in 1896 (140.3 cm; 135.8-144.8). The height differential between the tallest and shortest populations was 19-20 cm a century ago, and has remained the same for women and increased for men a century later despite substantial changes in the ranking of countries

Rising rural body-mass index is the main driver of the global obesity epidemic in adults

Body-mass index (BMI) has increased steadily in most countries in parallel with a rise in the proportion of the population who live in cities 1,2 . This has led to a widely reported view that urbanization is one of the most important drivers of the global rise in obesity 3�6 . Here we use 2,009 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight in more than 112 million adults, to report national, regional and global trends in mean BMI segregated by place of residence (a rural or urban area) from 1985 to 2017. We show that, contrary to the dominant paradigm, more than 55 of the global rise in mean BMI from 1985 to 2017�and more than 80 in some low- and middle-income regions�was due to increases in BMI in rural areas. This large contribution stems from the fact that, with the exception of women in sub-Saharan Africa, BMI is increasing at the same rate or faster in rural areas than in cities in low- and middle-income regions. These trends have in turn resulted in a closing�and in some countries reversal�of the gap in BMI between urban and rural areas in low- and middle-income countries, especially for women. In high-income and industrialized countries, we noted a persistently higher rural BMI, especially for women. There is an urgent need for an integrated approach to rural nutrition that enhances financial and physical access to healthy foods, to avoid replacing the rural undernutrition disadvantage in poor countries with a more general malnutrition disadvantage that entails excessive consumption of low-quality calories. © 2019, The Author(s)

Vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1) in Graves’ disease: its association to thyroid status and thyroid receptor stimulating antibodies

Soluble vascular cell adhesion molecule-1(sVCAM-1) and intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (sICAM-1) have been shown to be elevated in patients with Graves’ disease and may play significant roles in the pathogenesis of the disease. The objective of this study was to measure the levels of sVCAM-1, sICAM-1, IL-6 and thyroid receptor stimulating antibodies (TRAb) in a cohort of hyperthyroid patients and determine their associations to thyroid hormones status, before and after 3 months therapy with carbimazole. Patients were given fixed daily dose of 20 mg carbimazole for 3 months and blood samples were collected at baseline and end of the study. Thirty-eight patients were recruited from the Endocrine Clinic, Hospital Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, consisting of 26 females and 12 males, age ranging from 16 to 65 years. Blood samples collected before and at end of study were analysed for TSH, Free T3, Free T4, thyroid receptor stimulating antibodies (TRAb), sVCAM-1, sICAM-1 and IL-6. TRAb level of ≤10 U/L was taken to be negative, while TRAb level of >10 U/L was considered as positive. Twenty-six patients (68%) were TRAb positive (TRAb+) and 12 patients (30%) were TRAb negative (TRAb-). Median TRAb in TRAb+ patients was 23 U/L at baseline, declining to 16.7 U/L (p<0.001) in the third 3 month. Serum sVCAM-1 levels were significantly elevated in TRAb+ patients compared to TRAb- (860 versus 499 ng/mL, p<0.001). The level decreased significantly to 537 ng/mL with treatment but remained higher than in TRAb- patients (p=0.003). Irrespective of TRAb status, all but one patient had elevated serum sICAM-1 levels that remained unaffected by carbimazole therapy. In contrast, IL-6 levels of hyperthyroid patients were within the reference range of 1.4-14.1 pg/mL. Baseline and post-treatment sVCAM-1, and not TRAb levels, were significantly correlated to thyroid hormones. Compared to other inflammatory markers, sVCAM-1 showed significant correlation to thyroid stimulating antibodies and was most sensitive to changes in thyroid status. The significance of these findings in relation to Graves’ disease warrants further investigation