Birth size is not associated with depressive symptoms from adolescence to middle-age: results from the Northern Swedish Cohort study.

Low birth weight has been shown to be related to increased risk of depression later in life - but the evidence is not conclusive. We examined the association of size at birth with repeatedly measured depressive symptoms in 947 individuals from the Northern Swedish Cohort, a community-based age-homogeneous cohort born in 1965, and followed with questionnaires between ages 16 and 43 (participation rate above 90% in all the surveys). Information on birth size was retrieved from archived birth records. Length of gestation was known for a subsample of 512 individuals (54%). We studied the association of birth weight and ponderal index with self-reported depressive symptoms at ages 16, 21, 30 and 43; with the life-course average of depressive symptoms score and with longitudinal trajectories of depressive symptoms retrieved by latent class growth analysis. Socioeconomic background, mental illness or alcohol problems of a parent, exposure to social adversities in adolescence and prematurity were accounted for in the analyses. We did not find any relationship between weight or ponderal index at birth and our measure of depressive symptoms between ages 16 and 43 in a series of different analyses. Adjustment for length of gestation did not alter the results. We conclude that size at birth is not associated with later-life depressive symptoms score in this cohort born in the mid-1960s in Sweden. The time and context need to be taken into consideration in future studies.

Knowledge of HIV serostatus and risk behaviour among injecting drug users in Estonia.

We used the findings from two, cross-sectional studies of HIV serostatus and risk behaviours to assess the effects of knowledge of HIV serostatus and risk behaviours (relating to sex and injection drug use) among injecting drug users (IDUs). Respondent-driven sampling was used simultaneously at two sites in Estonia (the capital Tallinn, and the second-largest city of Ida-Virumaa County, Kohtla-Jarve). The research tool was an interviewer-administered survey. Biological samples were collected for HIV testing. Participants were categorised into three groups based on HIV testing results and self-report on HIV serostatus: HIV-negative (n=133); HIV-positive unaware of their serostatus (n=75); and HIV-positive aware of their serostatus (n=168). In total, 65% of the participants tested positive for HIV. Of those 69% were aware of their positive serostatus. HIV-positive IDUs aware of their serostatus exhibited more risk behaviours than their HIV-positive counterparts unaware of their serostatus or HIV-negative IDUs. Effective prevention of HIV among IDUs should therefore, include programmes to reduce high-risk sexual and drug use behaviours at the public health scale and enhanced prevention efforts focusing on HIV-infected individuals.

Does the strength of the association between foetal growth rate and ischaemic heart disease mortality differ by social circumstances in early or later life?

OBJECTIVE: To study whether the effect of size at birth on the risk of ischaemic heart disease (IHD) death is modified by social circumstances in childhood or in adulthood. DESIGN: A cohort study. Data on circumstances at birth were retrieved from archived obstetric records, social characteristics in adulthood and mortality follow-up through routine registers. PARTICIPANTS: 6159 men and 5663 women who were born in Uppsala University Hospital, Sweden (the Uppsala Birth Cohort) during 1915-1929, were singleton births with more than 30 weeks of gestational age and were alive in 1961. Follow-up time 1961-2002 (from age 31-46 to 73-88 years). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Death from IHD. Multivariate Cox regression with age as the time scale, controlling for year of birth and stratified by gender. RESULTS: The risk of IHD death was lower among men and women with higher weight for gestational age. Lower social class in adulthood was associated with a higher risk of IHD death. The effect of size at birth on IHD mortality did not appear to be modified by social class at birth but was only present in men of higher social class in adulthood (hazard ratio per 1 SD weight for gestational age 0.84, 95% CI 0.75 to 0.93). CONCLUSIONS: Weight for gestational age was inversely associated with the risk of IHD death in men and women; this effect was present in men of non-manual adult social class only but did not appear to be modified by adult social class in women or by social class at birth in either men or women.