Cardiovascular disease and weight... at birth

Abstract

Over the past 2 decades, multiple epidemiologic studies demonstrated that individuals born with low birth weight (LBW) are predisposed to cardiovascular disease and hypertension, but the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying this association remained poorly understood. In this issue of Blood, Ligi and colleagues demonstrate that endothelial progenitors from LBW infants exhibit striking reductions in their angiogenic properties, compared with those from infants born with normal weight, thus providing for the first time a potential mechanistic link between LBW and adult hypertension (see figure).