Socioeconomic and psychosocial conditions of parents and cardiovascular risk factors in their children: the Belgian Luxembourg Child Study III.

Socioeconomic and psychosocial handicaps are often associated with disease. There is a large body of information on adults on such relationships, but data are sparse on children. In a cohort of 1028 boys and girls, selected at random from school classes in Province de Luxembourg, a mainly rural area of Belgium, these problems were analysed in age strata of 6-8, 8-10, 10-12 years. Participation rate was 71%. Information was collected from questionnaires,. Anthropometric variables, blood pressure and glucose as well as cholesterol, triglycerides and insulin were measured in the children and related to the psychosocial and socioeconomic factors, organized into rural, psychosocial, socioeconomic and alcohol/smoking clusters of observations. Rural: Duration of living in the area of the child and parents correlated with diastolic blood pressure, particularly in boys (p < 0.01). Psychosocial: Housewives (p = 0.002) and their children (p = 0.002) had higher body mass indexes (BMI) than other mothers and their children. Sons of housewives also had higher blood pressure (systolic, p = 0.0007, diastolic, p = 0.007). Socioeconomic: Socioeconomic factors of parents (profession, unemployment) played relatively minor roles. Alcohol/smoking: Alcohol consumption was related to skinfold thickness in boys (p = 0.022), but not in girls. Girls, but not boys, with smoking parents had higher BMI (p=0.014). Multiple regression analyses suggested that psychosocial factors, such as housewives as mothers of large families, may be important for associations with cardiovascular risk factors in their children. There were apparent differences in the findings between girls and boys, suggesting that boys are more vulnerable to the impacts of the factors analysed.