Proposal summaries
B286 - Diet at 4 and 8 months related to haemoglobin and ferritin levels at 8 12 and 18 months - 01/09/2004
From around six months onwards breast milk alone no longer provides enough iron to sustain adequate blood haemoglobin and ferritin levels in infants. It is important to introduce suitable weaning foods from this age and incorporate feeding practices that enhance absorption of iron from the diet (eg Vit C containing foods or drinks with meals).
This study will be nested within ALSPAC a unique, ongoing research project which enrolled 14,541 mothers during pregnancy in 1991-2 and has followed the children and parents in minute detail ever since. It is a world resource with unrivalled data - with the potential to find ways in which common diseases in childhood and adult life can be prevented or treated.
B195 - Research Fellowship including ALSPAC analyses see B0346 - 01/09/2004
Depressive disorder is common, and frequently affects parents. Maternal postnatal depression in
particular has been linked to later behavioural, emotional and cognitive problems in children.
However, the impact of paternal depression in the early months of an infants life on their subsequent
development has been largely overlooked. This research programme aims to illuminate this gap.
Objectives
1. To examine the influence of paternal depression in the postnatal period on father-child interaction
and the child's behavioural, emotional and cognitive development.
2. To examine the potential processes by which any adverse effects arise.
Design and methods.
The principal focus of the research will be a detailed longitudinal cohort study. This will comprise
two groups of fathers and their young infants; one a group of fathers with depression, and one
without depression. There will be three assessment points, at which detailed observational
measures of father-child interaction and other assessments of family functioning will be undertaken.
The child's behavioural, emotional and cognitive development will also be assessed.
I also plan to extend my analysis of data from the large ALSPAC population cohort study to examine
the relationship between paternal depression in the postnatal period and children's emotional and
behavioural problems up to school age.
B194 - Avon Adolescent Development Project - 01/09/2004
(No outline received).
B193 - The consequences of exposure to maternal depressive symptoms cognition language - 01/09/2004
(No outline received).
B192 - Detrimental health effects of metals exposure - a risk assessment DEMETRA - 01/09/2004
(No outline received).
B191 - ALSPAC as a resource for asthma research - 01/09/2004
The project will establish a resource of detailed asthma phenotypes from birth to 8.5 years based on available questionnaire and objective data. The resource will be linked to a wide range of information on environmental exposures before and after birth to address the following general hypotheses:
1. Different environmental exposures in early life are associated with different phenotypic outcomes of asthma.
2. Outcomes are determined by the timing and the magnitude of exposures and by their interactions with (a) other environmental risk/protective factors and (b) family history of asthma/atopy.
3. Exposures at different stages of development (prenatal, perinatal, postnatal) have differential effects on asthma outcomes.
The outcomes will generate new hypotheses about the origins of asthma in early childhood that will be used as the basis for targeted proposal to examine interactions between genetic predisposition and environment in the development and phenotypic expression of asthma in childhood.
B190 - Genetics of asthma GWAS - 01/09/2004
Asthma is an inflammatory disease of the airways of the lung. Asthmatics suffer from intermittent airflow
limitation and the symptoms of wheeze and shortness of breath.
Asthma is not one disease but many. In childhood it is commonly associated with allergy (atopy) to
common inhaled proteins (allergens). Significant numbers of children with disease have persistent symptoms
throughout life. Asthma also may present in later life, when it is less obviously associated with allergy, more
common in women and cigarette smokers, and often resistant to treatment. The combination of cigarette
smoking and asthma can produce chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which is the sixth most common
cause of death worldwide. Occupational asthma is due to workplace exposure to dusts and chemicals, and is
the most prevalent occupational lung disease in the European Community. Ten % of new onset adult asthma
cases are caused by workplace exposures, and the prognosis of most forms of occupational asthma is poor
and is associated with job loss, loss of income and loss of quality of life.
Asthma has a high prevalence and a chronic relapsing course. Childhood asthma is a global health
problem that imposes a burden on family, health care and society as a whole, and results in a massive social
and economic cost to the community.
A recent cost-of-illness study requested by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European
Commission has estimated the total burden of asthma in children under the age of 15 in the 25 EU member
states to be EUR3.0 billion each year. The total burden of asthma to the European Community is at least double
when taking adult and occupational asthma into account. A significant reduction of the quality of life of
asthmatic children is well recognised.
Current asthma therapies are effective in cases of mild asthma, but severe asthma remains very
difficult to treat, and 80% of the cost arises from the 20% of individuals with severe disease 1.
The aim of the GABRIEL project is to discover the environmental and genomic causes of asthma.
The understanding of these factors and their interactions at the molecular level will open new avenues into
the development of preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic strategies to combat the asthma epidemic in
Europe and worldwide. This proposal lays out an extended systematic structure of research that will define
the molecular mechanisms of gene-environment interactions and
B188 - Developing biomarkers of exposure to chemicals and biomarkers of effect using mother-child birth cohorts and biobanks - 01/08/2004
(No outline received).
B187 - Academy of Finland - EU Centre of Excellence - 01/08/2004
(No outline received).
B295 - Developmental antecedents of borderline personality disorders - 01/07/2004
(No outline received).
B184 - A UK-Singapore cross cohort comparison of the risk factors for myopia - 01/07/2004
(No outline received).
B183 - Impact of a family history of diabetes on early weight gain body composition and fitness - 01/07/2004
(No outline received).
B178 - Risk taking behaviour in adolescence - its origins and consequences - 01/07/2004
(No outline received).
B176 - The natural history of asthma and wheezing illnesses from birth to adolescence determinants of remission of asthma symptoms - 01/07/2004
The proposed project is based on the follow up of a well-characterised population of children in the
Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) to investigate factors associated with the onset and
remission of asthma symptoms during adolescence. ALSPAC is a longitudinal birth cohort of 13,971 infants
followed from birth. Detailed analyses of asthma phenotypes have been made on data from early childhood to age
8 1/2 years, including objective measurements of lung function and allergic status. The proposed study will extend
these observations through the critical period of adolescence to study exposures associated with onset or remission
of asthma symptoms and their relationships with further objective outcome measures proposed in this project.
Aims & Objectives: The aims are to describe the natural history of asthma from birth to adolescence and to examine
the factors that influence the remission of asthma symptoms. The primary hypotheses to be tested in this project are
that changes in body fat composition, diet, habitual activity and the uptake of active smoking are independently
associated with the remission, persistence or onset of asthma symptoms during adolescence (from 8 1/2 to 15+ years)
and that effects differ between males and females in this population. We will investigate the possible mechanisms
of these effects by measuring objective outcomes, including lung function, bronchodilator reversibility and a marker
of airway inflammation, exhaled nitric oxide. Finally, we will investigate whether exposures during adolescence
interact with prior exposures and asthma history in determining the resolution of asthma symptoms in adolescence.
Methods: Exposure data will be collected as part of the ALSPAC Core Programme. Data on body composition will
be available from whole body DXA scans repeated at 11, 13+, and 15+ years, reports of physical activity are
available from annual questionnaires and objective measurements of activity have been made using accelerometers.
Dietary intake is calculated from food frequency questionnaires and tobacco smoke exposure will be estimated from
parental and child questionnaires. We will also measure urinary cotinine at 15+ years to validate these reports as
part of this project. Outcomes will include extending the analysis of asthma symptoms from 8 1/2 years to 15+ years
using data from annual self-report questionnaires. From these we will establish asthma trajectories for each child
from birth to adolescence. We will measure lung function by spirometry at 15+ years and measure bronchodilator
reversibility. We will also assess airway inflammation by measuring exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO) at 15+ years.
These measurements will be used to characterise subjects with asthma remission depending on the presence or
absence of airflow obstruction and airway inflammation.
Outcomes: the project will provide novel information on factors associated with asthma remission during the
critical period of adolescence in a large contemporary cohort of children. Knowledge of these factors and their
associations with persistent abnormalities of pulmonary function and/or airway inflammation may help to identify
targets for interventions aimed at encouraging asthma remission. In addition, the data generated by this project will
provide important new data for the study of genetic susceptibilities and gene-environment interactions in the natural
history of asthma during childhood.
B172 - Impact of minor head injury on cognitive emotional behavioural and real life outcomes in childhood - 01/06/2004
(No outline received).
B171 - Investigating the link between sleep duration appetite and obesity - 01/06/2004
(No outline received).
B170 - Point prevalence of nasal carriage of methicillin resistant and methicillin susceptible aureus - 01/06/2004
(No outline received).
B169 - The processing of chromatic signals fundamental studies and clinical applications - 01/06/2004
(No outline received).
B181 - Medically Unexplained Symptoms MUPS - 01/05/2004
(No outline received).
B168 - Smoking initiation - 01/05/2004
(No outline received).