Birthweight and natural deaths in a remote Australian Aboriginal community.

The article discusses a study on the low birthweight in infants that affects adults for chronic disease mortality in the Aboriginal Australians. It associates lower birthweights with higher blood pressures, hyperinsulinaemia and diabetes in young Aboriginals. The study made use of people whose birthweights were recorded and born alive to Aboriginal mothers from a homogenous ethnic group in a coast of the Northern Territory. It concludes that with lower mortalities in infancy and childhood, babies born with lower birthweights can survive to adult life.