Associations between a paternal healthy lifestyle score and its individual components with childhood overweight and obesity

Background: Maternal healthy lifestyle behaviors during pregnancy have been associated with reduced risk of offspring overweight and obesity (OWOB). However, there has been little investigation, in the context of the Paternal Origins of Health and Disease (POHaD) paradigm, of the potential influence of the paternal lifestyle on offspring OWOB. Objectives: To describe paternal healthy lifestyle factors around pregnancy and investigate their associations, individually and combined, with offspring risk of OWOB during childhood. Materials and methods: Participants included 295 father-child pairs from the Lifeways Cross-Generation Cohort Study. A composite paternal healthy lifestyle score (HLS) based on having a high dietary quality (top 40% of the Healthy Eating Index-2015), meeting physical activity guidelines (≥450 MET-min/week of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity), having a healthy body mass index (BMI) (18.5-24.9 kg/m2 ), being a non-smoker, and having no/moderate alcohol intake, was calculated (range 0-5). Paternal HLS (and individual components) associations with child BMI and waist-to-height ratio (WHtR) at age 5 and 9 years were assessed using linear (BMI z-scores and WHtR) and logistic (IOTF categories) regression analyses, adjusted for sociodemographic characteristics. Results: At age 5 and 9 years, 23.5% and 16.9% of children were classified as living with OWOB, respectively. Of the 160 pairs with a complete HLS, 45.0% of the fathers had unfavorable lifestyle factors, determined by a low HLS between 0 and 2 points. Although a low paternal HLS was not significantly associated with a higher risk of childhood OWOB measured using either BMI z-scores and IOTF categories, it was associated with a greater child WHtR, an indicator of central adiposity, at 9 years of age (β [95% CI] = 0.04 [0.01,0.07]). Discussion and conclusion: Almost half of the fathers had unfavorable lifestyle factors around pregnancy. A low paternal HLS was associated with a greater child WHtR at 9 years but not with a higher risk of childhood OWOB when measured by BMI z-scores or IOTF categories.