ESPE Yearbook of Paediatric Endocrinology

To read the full abstract: Int Health 2018; 10; 66-70

This article summarizes the concept of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) and emphasizes its potential relevance to the marked increase in non-communicable diseases, including Type 2 diabetes, observed in low-resource settings. This is an important topic as the DOHaD concept may be a strong contributing factor to the developing Type 2 diabetes epidemic. Geographical differences between the contribution of maternal nutrition, birthweight and postnatal nutrition are not considered in this article but are likely to influence the relevance of the DOHaD concept across regions. For instance, a large part of the clinical knowledge on DOHaD comes from work performed in India, where small for gestational age (SGA) is highly prevalent. Readers interested in this topic should look at the work by Caroline Fall (Southampton, UK) which focuses on the Indian subcontinent and at the publications by the research team of the New Delhi cohort (started in 1969). Whether the determinants specific to India also apply to other parts of the world where SGA (see Lee et al., Lancet Global Health, 1, No. 1, e26–e36, July 2013) and severe underweight in childhood (see article by NCD Risk Factor Collaboration in the “Growth and Development” subsection of this chapter) seem much less prevalent need to be investigated. There may be country-specific solutions to decrease the adverse consequences of poor fetal development.