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In the United Kingdom, Bangladeshi women have the lowest self-reported levels of physical activity and some of the highest levels of metabolic disease of all ethnic groups. To better understand these risks for poor health we employed life course and intergenerational hypotheses to predict lower body physical function in a sample of 121 Bangladeshi mothers (40-70 years old) and one of their adult daughters (17-36 years old) living in Bangladesh or in the UK. For the mothers, older age and shorter knee height predicted reduced lower body physical function. Knee height is a biomarker of nutrition and health status between birth and puberty. Age at first birth did not have a significant effect. For daughters, older age and migration to the UK predicted reduced lower body physical function. We controlled for total stature and fatness in all analyses. UK-born daughters were taller than BD-born daughters living in the UK, mostly due to differences in knee height. These new findings support previous research indicating that early life health and adequate nutritional status, along with appropriate adult physical activity and diet, may decrease risks for poor physical function, morbidity, and premature mortality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on birth spacing, i.e. since marriage to first live birth in the rural areas of Bangladesh. The objective of this study was to examine the socio-economic factors which influenced the birth spacing among women since their marriage to their first live birth. The analysis was based on the primary data collected from women through a structured questionnaire. Different socio-demographic and economic factors which determined birth spacing had been identified in the analysis. A multivariate quantitative analysis was applied for this study. The findings indicated that both the socio-demographic and economic factors played, to some extent, a significant and important role in determining the birth spacing since marriage to first live birth. In particular, the women's level of education played the most important role, and this was followed by the respondents' age at marriage, quality of care at the clinic, respondents' present age, mass media exposure, age gap between spouses, respondents' age at familiarity with contraceptives and family's income. All these factors explained 13.5 percent of the variation in birth spacing since marriage to first live birth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: It has recently been advocated that iron supplementation begin before childbearing. A key operational issue is how to identify females before pregnancy. Objective: To examine factors associated with time to first pregnancy and adolescent pregnancy. Methods: A cross-sectional survey in Gazipur, Bangladesh from April to May 2006 among ever married females aged less than 50 years. Results: Data on 603 females were analyzed. Median age was 31 years (15-49). Median age at marriage was 17 years (11-31). Only 15% (7/47) of never pregnant females reported iron use in the past 6 months. 58% (322/556) of females were <19 years old at first pregnancy. Median time from marriage to first pregnancy was 12 months (0-408). Multivariate hazard analysis found risk of pregnancy increased by 13% for every one-year increase in age at marriage (p<0.0001) and decreased by 3% for every one-year increase in female¡-s current age (p<0.0001). Risk among medical contraceptive users was 58% of the risk of non-users (p=0.0001).Using multivariate logistic regression analysis, probability of an adolescent pregnancy decreased by 3% for each year of marriage during adolescence (CI: 0.95-0.99, p=0.01), by 10% for each year increase in husband¡-s age at marriage (0.87-0.94, p<0.0001), by 68% among female wage earners compared to non-wage earners (0.16-0.64, p=0.001) and by 50% among medical contraceptive users compared to non-users (0.30-0.85, p=0.01). Conclusions: In this population females are married at a young age with short time to 1st pregnancy intervals. Periconceptional iron supplementation programs should target adolescents and newly-weds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]