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INTRODUCTION: At a time when a great number of diseases can be prevented by changing one's habits and life style, investigations have focused on understanding what adults and children believe to be desirable health practices and uncovering the factors associated with successful adherence to such practices. For these, causal attributions for health and illness were investigated among 96 Brazilian elementary school students. METHODS: Ninety six subjects, aged 6 to 14, were interviewed individually and their causal attributions were assessed through 14 true-false items (e.g. people stay well [healthy] because they are lucky). The relationship between the children's causal attributions and demographic characteristics were also examined. RESULTS: Overall, the results were consistent with previous researches. "Taking care of oneself" was considered the most important cause of good health. "Viruses and germs" and "lack of self-care" were the most selected causes of illness. Analyses revealed significant relationship between subjects' causal attribution and their age, school grade level, socioeconomic status and gender. CONCLUSIONS: The study findings suggest that there may be more cross-cultural similarities than differences in children's causal attributions for health and illness. Finding ways to help individuals engage in appropriate preventive-maintenance health practices without developing an exaggerated notion that the individuals can control their own health and illness is a challenge which remains to be addressed by further research.

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BACKGROUND: Whether individuals who were small at birth are at increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease (the Barker hypothesis) is a topic of great controversy. Although an increased risk has been suggested by several reports, the reports have been criticized for being based on ill-defined populations, for the large numbers of subjects who were unavailable for follow-up, and for inadequate control of socioeconomic status. OBJECTIVE: To determine whether a woman's weight and gestational age at birth predict the development of hypertension during her subsequent pregnancies. DESIGN: Prospective observational study. SUBJECTS: Women born in Copenhagen, Denmark, as subjects in the Danish Perinatal Study (1959-1961) were traced through the Danish Population Register. Information was obtained on their pregnancies from 1974 to 1989. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Onset of hypertension in pregnancy, defined by the presence of a systolic blood pressure of 140 mm Hg or greater or a diastolic blood pressure of 90 mm Hg or greater on 2 visits at or after 140 days' gestation. RESULTS: Hypertension developed in 11.3% of the pregnant women who were small for gestational age at birth, compared with 7.2% of the pregnant women who were not small for gestational age at birth (odds ratio [OR], 1.7; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.1-2.6), and in 9.4% of the pregnancies in women who were preterm at birth, compared with 7.6% of pregnancies in women who were not preterm at birth (OR, 1.3; 95% CI, 0.8-2.0). After adjustment for adult body mass index, smoking, birth order, and hypertension in the subjects' own mothers, the ORs for small-for-gestational-age women and preterm women to develop hypertension during pregnancy were 1.8 (95% CI, 1.1-2.8) and 1.5 (95% CI, 0.96-2.5), respectively. CONCLUSION: These results support the Barker hypothesis, while addressing many of the methodological criticisms of previous investigations.

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OBJECTIVE: We sought to determine whether paternal size at birth and during young adulthood influences the birth weight of the offspring. STUDY DESIGN: This historic cohort study followed up girls born in Copenhagen during 1959 to 1961. Their pregnancies in 1974 to 1989 were traced through the Danish Population Register, and the Personal Identification Numbers of the fathers of the children were obtained. Paternal birth weight was obtained from midwifery records and adult stature from military draft records. RESULTS: Compared with fathers who weighed at least 4 kg at birth, fathers who weighed 3 to 3.99 kg at birth had infants who were 109 gm lighter, and fathers who weighed <3 kg had infants who were 176 gm lighter after adjustment for maternal birth weight and adult stature, smoking, and medical and socioeconomic factors. After adjustment, fathers in the lowest quartile of adult body mass index had infants that were 105 gm lighter than those of fathers in the highest quartile. Both paternal birth weight and adult body mass index exhibited significant trends in association with infant birth weight. CONCLUSION: Independently of maternal size, the father's physical stature, particularly his own size at birth, influences the birth weight of his children.

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OBJECTIVE: Our purpose was to determine whether women who were themselves small for gestational age at birth are at risk of giving birth to a small-for-gestational-age child and whether women who were themselves preterm at birth are at risk for preterm delivery. STUDY DESIGN: Women born in Copenhagen as subjects in the Danish Perinatal Study (1959 to 1961) were traced through the Danish Population Register. Information was obtained on their pregnancies during 1974 through 1989. RESULTS: A total of 25% of the children of small-for-gestational-age women were small for gestational age compared with 11% of the children of non-small-for-gestational-age women. Eleven percent of the children of preterm women were preterm compared with 7% of the children of women born at term. The adjusted odds ratios were 2.0 (95% confidence interval 1.4 to 3.0) for women who were small for gestational age to have small-for-gestational-age children and 1.5 (95% confidence interval 0.9 to 2.5) for women who were born preterm to have preterm children. Small-for-gestational-age women were not at significantly increased risk of preterm delivery (odds ratio 1.2), and preterm women were not at significantly increased risk of having small-for-gestational-age children (odds ratio 1.3). CONCLUSIONS: Reduced intrauterine growth of the mother is a risk factor for reduced intrauterine growth of her children. However, preterm birth of the mother is not strongly associated with preterm birth of her children.

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INTRODUCTION: In spite of general agreement that cross-cultural research is needed in the health area, most existing investigations of children's development of health and illness-related concepts have involved samples from developed countries. The study examined the development of the concepts of health and illness as a function of subject's age, socio-economic status (SES), gender and grade level in a Brazilian sample of 96 elementary and junior high school students. METHODS: Subjects were interviewed individually and their ideas of health and illness were assessed through open-ended questions. Participants' answers were transcribed verbatim and subjected to content analysis. RESULTS: Chi-square analyses revealed significant age, school grade and SES-related differences in participants' concepts of health and illness. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: The themes employed by subjects to define both health and illness were broadly consistent with those found by previous research. The study showed a predictable relationship between subject's age and school grade level and increasingly more highly differentiated and multidimensional concepts of health and illness. This investigation suggests that, for the most part, cross-cultural similarities in children's concepts of health and illness may be more striking than the differences.

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To study the mother-infant correlation of fetal growth and duration of pregnancy, women who were born as subjects in the Danish Perinatal Study (1959-61) were traced and interviewed, and the pregnancy and birth records of their children were abstracted. The study population consisted of 159 women who were small-for-gestational age (SGA) at birth, 162 who were preterm, 38 who were both preterm and SGA, and 939 term, appropriately-grown control women. Methods for sample selection, measuring gestational age and fetal growth in both generations, locating and interviewing the women, abstracting the records of their children, and obtaining paternal birth and adult stature are described. A total of 84.5% of the selected women were successfully interviewed; the fraction interviewed did not differ by maternal birth status. The medical records of over 98% of pregnancies to the study women were abstracted, making it possible to study various factors associated with completion of an interview. By a variety of measures, women of higher socio-economic status were more likely to be interviewed. Birthweight and adult weights were available for 63 and 73% of the children's fathers.

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Two generations of women were studied to clarify the influence of a woman's own preterm delivery or intrauterine growth retardation on her later risk of delivering preterm or growth-retarded infants. The first generation consists of the cohort of women who gave birth at the National University Hospital (Rigshospitalet) in Copenhagen from 1959 to 1961 and the second, those of their daughters that have delivered themselves. The background of the study and the procedures involved are described. The percentage of data obtained and the preliminary findings concerning the relationship between social and demographic factors and the willingness of subjects to participate are included.

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This study provides a longitudinal view of selected correlates of family disruption and suggests how they may contribute to adolescent and young adult criminal behavior. Data from a sample of 410 males, ages 19-21, who took part in an 18-year follow-up study of a Danish Prospective Perinatal Cohort, were used. Paternal crime, descriptions of the families'patterns of stability, and socioeconomic status changes over the life of the offspring were examined to determine their association with official records of adolescent and young adult crime. Analyses showed that divorce followed by a stable family constellation was notassociated with increased risk of criminal behavior, whereas divorce followed by additional changes in family constellations significantly increased the risk. Age at onset of child criminality was notrelated to stability patterns. Males experiencing continued instability during adolescence were especially at risk. Downward changes in SES and record of paternal crime both showed independent associations with offspring crime.

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In the general population teenage pregnancies present an elevated rate of perinatal mortality compared with pregnancies of women in their 20s. In 2 large-scale university hopsital studies (American and Danish) the teenage pregnancies showed lower perinatal mortality than those of any other age group. This article attempts to determine the origin of these differing results. A comparative analysis was conducted, focusing on methodologies, subject characteristics, and treatment procedures involved in the 2 classes of studies, which involved representative populations and university hospital samples. The uniformly high quality medical treatment provides to all subjects in the university hospital samples contrasted with the uneven quality of treatment found in population studies constituted the most important difference. Since pregnant teenagers generally tend to be of lower socioeconomic status, they are likely to receive inferior medical care. It was argued that this factor could, to a large extent, be responsible for the elevated mortality rates found in teenage pregnancies in representative populations.

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This study concerns itself with the neurological functioning of 11-year-old children who neonatally presented a variety of shortlived or transient symptoms. These symptoms, while shortlived, are similar in nature to symptoms which other authors have shown to be correlated with later increased rate of neurological deviance. By using the data from a birth cohort of 9,006 consecutive deliveries, we attempted to discover whether such symptoms, when only transiently present in the newborn, are correlated with later neurological functioning. Results indicate that the subjects with transient neonatal symptoms presented more neurological deviance at age 10--12 than did matched controls.

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