“This doesn’t mean that body weight and blood pressure aren’t important — they are — but there appear to be additional factors that contribute to cardiovascular disease risk beyond the traditional factors,” Burgner said. “So, there may be multiple opportunities for early intervention to prevent cardiovascular disease.”
The authors wrote that, given the link between socioeconomic position in infancy and carotid artery measurements at mid-childhood, it may be that cardiovascular disease risk begins before a baby is born. “Reducing social inequality and poverty before birth, as well as in early childhood, is likely to have a significant impact on later cardiovascular disease,” Liu said.
“Every child needs and deserves the opportunity to grow up healthy,” said Clyde Yancy, M.D., American Heart Association past president and chief of cardiology at Northwestern University in Chicago. “Fortunately, we have the tools to improve heart health across the lifespan by ensuring every child has healthy foods to eat and safe places to be active. Community leaders need to focus on giving kids a healthy start from birth, healthy schools as they grow up, and healthy communities for families to thrive.”
Because this is an observational study, a cause-and-effect association between socioeconomic position and carotid IMT cannot be proved. It is also not yet known whether thicker carotid arteries in mid-childhood are linked to cardiovascular risk in adulthood. All study participants were Australian, which may limit application of findings to other populations.
The study was funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, The Royal Children’s Hospital Foundation, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, The University of Melbourne, National Heart Foundation of Australia, Financial Markets Foundation for Children, and Victorian Deaf Education Institute.
Family and neighborhood socioeconomics can impact a child’s carotid arteries, according to research released on Wednesday.