摘要
The developmental origins for health and disease concept supports that early life environment can affect future health balance and disease.Findings suggest that birthweight(BW)can be a useful indicator of processes that influence long-term health.In fact,there is increasing evidence associating BW with later-life infections,allergy,autoimmune and cancer diseases.To date,there is no common mechanism to explain BW’s direct influence on disease expression during the life cycle.On the other hand,leptin,a circulating hormone,has been pointed as relevant in many disease pathways,including immunological and oncological,and leptin levels seem to vary directly with BW.We suggest that BW could affect early immune programming through variant early-life leptin hormone levels.It is possible that higher leptin levels in higher BW and lower leptin levels in low BW relate to a shift in Th1 and Th2 responses,accounting for different incidences of infections,allergy,autoimmune and cancers,and raising an integrative hypothesis for the effect of BW on future disease.We hope that our hypothesis concerning the possible role of early life leptin levels on immune programming and future disease can be confirmed by experimental data.
