The Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) framework suggests that early-life experiences affect long-term health outcomes. We tested this hypothesis by estimating the long-run effects of exposure to World War II-related food deprivation during childhood and adolescence on the risk of suffering from hypertension and type 2 diabetes at adulthood for 90,226 women from the French prospective cohort study E3N. We found that the experience of food deprivation during early-life was associated with a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes (+0.7%, 95% CI: 0.073–1.37%) and hypertension (+2.6%, 95% CI: 0.81–4.45%). Effects were stronger for individuals exposed at younger ages. Exposed individuals also achieved lower levels of education, slept less, and were more frequently smokers than unexposed individuals. These results are compatible with both the latency and the pathway models proposed in the DOHaD framework which theorise the association between early life exposure and adult health through both a direct link and an indirect link where changes in health determinants mediate health outcomes.

健康与疾病的发展起源（DOHaD）框架表明，早期的生活经历会影响长期的健康状况。我们通过评估来自法国前瞻性队列研究E3N的90,226名妇女在童年和青春期与第二次世界大战相关的食物匮乏的暴露对成年后患高血压和2型糖尿病的风险的长期影响，从而检验了这一假设。我们发现，生命早期食物匮乏的经历与罹患2型糖尿病（+ 0.7％，95％CI：0.073–1.37％）和高血压（+ 2.6％，95％CI：0.81– 4.45％）。对于年龄较小的人，效果更强。与未接触者相比，接触者的受教育程度也较低，睡眠较少，并且吸烟者更为频繁。