To add to the list of reasons why we love summer, a new study published in the journal Heliyon finds that women born during the summer months are more likely to be healthy adults.
Looking at a number of factors, the research team from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge, UK found that the birth month affects a number of factors towards a healthy female adult life, such as birth weight, vitamin D exposure, and when a girl starts puberty.
Making a difference in the womb
A womb’s environment, even before birth, can influence a person’s health later in life. Defined as programming, this effect impacts development throughout childhood and later on into adulthood.
“When you were conceived and born occurs largely ‘at random’—it’s not affected by social class, your parents’ ages or their health—so looking for patterns with birth month is a powerful study design to identify influences of the environment before birth,” explained Dr. John Perry, lead author of the study.
Going off of previous studies linking certain effects with birthing season, Perry and his team decided to study more closely the link between birth month and a person’s growth and developments, such as the timing of puberty and its effect on later health.
To begin, researchers studied whether birth month affected birth weight, puberty’s onset, and adult height by comparing the development of approximately 450,000 men and women from the UK Biobank study, a major national health resource intended to provide data towards tracking disease developments.
The results found that children born during the summer weighed slightly more at birth and grew taller as adults. Further, research revealed for the first time that girls born in the summer started puberty later, indicating better health in adult life.
“This is the first time puberty timing has been robustly linked to seasonality,” said Perry. “We were surprised, and pleased, to see how similar the patterns were on birth weight and puberty timing. Our results show that birth month has a measurable effect on development and health, but more work is needed to understand the mechanisms behind this effect.”
Why do seasonal changes tie into biological changes?
While more research is needed, some researchers believe that the differences between summer and winter babies could even lie in the mother’s sun exposure—or the amount of vitamin D exposure—during pregnancy.
“We don’t know the mechanisms that cause these season of birth patterns on birth weight, height, and puberty timing, concluded Perry. “We need to understand these mechanisms before our findings can be translated into health benefits. We think that vitamin D exposure is important and our findings will hopefully encourage other research on the long-term effects of early life vitamin D on puberty timing and health.”
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Feature Image: Thinkstock
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