Early Life Exposure to the Great Chinese Famine and Cardiometabolic Outcomes
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Importance: Epidemiologic studies suggest that people who were exposed to famine during early life but now live in nutrient-abundant environments have an elevated risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D) and other cardiometabolic conditions. Although many individuals who were exposed to famine in early life have now immigrated to high-income countries, the association between early life famine exposure and cardiometabolic outcomes among immigrants is unknown. Objective: To investigate the associations of early life exposure to the Great Chinese Famine with the incidence of T2D, hypertension, and cardiovascular hospitalization among immigrants. Design, Setting, and Participants: This population-based cohort study in Ontario, Canada, used 3 cohorts (1 for each coprimary outcome of T2D, hypertension, and cardiovascular hospitalization) of adult Chinese immigrants aged 20 to 85 years living in Ontario from April 1, 1992, to March 31, 2019. Participants were followed up until 85 years of age, relocation from Ontario, or March 31, 2023 (whichever occurred first). Data were analyzed from April 22, 2024, to September 30, 2025. Exposure: Prenatal, childhood, and adolescent exposure to famine, classified by year of birth (1941-1952). Those born before 1941 or after 1962 served as the comparison group. Main Outcomes and Measures: Incident T2D, hypertension, and cardiovascular hospitalization were the coprimary outcomes. Results: The T2D cohort included 188 292 individuals (exposed: mean [SD] age, 52.6 [10.8] years; 53.3% female; unexposed: mean [SD] age, 37.4 [12.5] years; 54.9% female), the hypertension cohort included 180 510 individuals (exposed: mean [SD] age, 51.8 [10.6] years; 52.3% female; unexposed: mean [SD] age, 36.6 [11.5] years; 55.0% female), and the cardiovascular hospitalization cohort included 208 921 individuals (exposed: mean [SD] age, 50.5 [12.0] years; 51.5% female; comparison: mean [SD] age, 37.8 [13.1] years; 54.6% female). Event rates among the famine-exposed group were 13.6% for T2D, 29.8% for hypertension, and 1.6% for cardiovascular hospitalization. Early life famine exposure was associated with increased hazards of T2D (prenatal: hazard ratio [HR], 1.58 [95% CI, 1.49-1.68]; childhood: HR, 1.45 [95% CI, 1.38-1.54]; adolescent: HR, 1.37 [95% CI, 1.28-1.46]) and hypertension (prenatal: HR, 1.22 [95% CI, 1.17-1.27]; childhood: HR, 1.25 [95% CI, 1.21-1.30]; adolescent: HR, 1.25 [95% CI, 1.20-1.31]). Prenatal and childhood exposure to famine were not associated with risk of cardiovascular hospitalization (prenatal: HR, 0.92 [95% CI, 0.76-1.12]; childhood: HR, 0.98 [95% CI, 0.86-1.11]), but adolescent exposure to famine was associated with a 14% decrease in risk of cardiovascular hospitalization (HR, 0.86 [95% CI, 0.75-0.98]). Conclusions and Relevance: In this cohort study of Chinese immigrants, early life famine exposure was strongly associated with increased risks of incident T2D and hypertension, but not cardiovascular hospitalization. Early life undernutrition is a novel cardiometabolic risk factor among immigrants associated with the burden of T2D and hypertension in high-income countries.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".