This project will investigate how speech sounds develop in the first 8 years of life in children born prematurely. Preterm children are at increased risk of impaired neurodevelopment, which can include problems with acquisition of speech and speech disorder. Speech sound disorder can impact their learning, mental health, and life chances in adulthood. This study will provide information on how prematurity impacts speech development and how this compares with full-term children. This will help health professionals in the early identification and intervention of preterm children requiring support.

The study comprises five workstreams. 1) a full systematic review of the literature to determine the characteristics associated with speech sound development in preterm children; 2) examination of data from the ALSPAC dataset to explore the characteristics and outcomes of speech development in preterm children in the first 8 years of life compared with full term children; 3) examination of data from the National Neonatal Audit Programme (NNAP) to explore how the degree of prematurity impacts speech development in preterm children; 4) collection of new data from a clinical sample of preterm children recruited from NHS neonatal services in Bristol and Cardiff; 5) a UK-wide online survey will determine the role of Speech and Language Therapists in NHS neurodevelopmental assessments for preterm children in the first 3 years of life.

This projects seeks to deepen our understanding of how the timing of puberty affects adult health outcomes, specifically, risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD). The age at which a girl gets her first menstrual period (age at menarche, or AAM) has a peculiar relationship with CVD: both earlier and later AAM are associated with increased risk of CVD in adulthood.

In preliminary work focusing on later AAM, we applied human genetic techniques to distinguish the effects of common genetic changes on AAM from the effects of other, yet-to-be-identified factors. We were surprised to find that the relationship between later AAM and CVD depends on the underlying cause of later AAM. If caused by common genetic changes, later AAM is actually associated with _lower_ risk of cardiovascular disease. In contrast, if caused by other factors, later AAM is associated with _increased_ risk of cardiovascular disease.

The broad goals of this project are 1) to better understand how common genetic changes affect AAM by subgrouping common genetic variants based on their effects on childhood factors known to affect AAM, and 2) to identify factors other than common genetic changes that influence AAM.

In recent years there has been increasing interest in the phenomenon of camouflaging (hiding or compensating for neurodivergent traits), particularly within autistic populations. Camouflaging is understood to be associated with poorer mental health in these populations. The most common method of measuring camouflaging is through a brief self-report measure. However, there have been no unselected population-based studies which measure camouflaging, and therefore we do not know whether, and to what degree, camouflaging is unique to neurodivergent populations and whether it is associated with poorer mental health outcomes across the general population. This project aims to assess the prevalence of camouflaging across the general population for the first time, and to compare between typically developing individuals and those with neurodevelopmental and mental health conditions.

Adolescents are more likely to become dissatisfied with their body as they could be more easily influenced by their peers and media and internalize bodily norms. In order to alter their body, adolescents may use several strategies such as restrained eating or dieting. Eating restraint and dieting during adolescence could interfere with physical growth and cognitive development, predispose them to weight gain, prompt disinhibited eating, and increase risk of severe eating disorders. Furthermore, health-related habits such as dieting and eating behaviors tend to persist into adulthood.
There is a gap in research about the associations between a combination of different dimensions of eating behaviors in adolescence and health behaviors in adulthood. This research aims to address this gap by studying how adolescents with distinct profile of eating behavior dimensions, including restrained eating and uncontrolled eating, differ from each other during their adulthood in terms of body composition and food preferences. Findings could assist in identifying adolescents at higher risk of obesity and less healthy food choices with regards to dimensions of eating behavior.

Becoming a parent is an important life event that has a significant impact on the way that we live our lives.
This project will look at how having a child impacts new parents’ mental health and well-being, by using information about ALSPAC participants before they have had children, and seeing how this changes afterwards.
This will help us to understand which parts of our well-being are affected by having children, when this happens, and why different people react differently to becoming parents.
By understanding the experiences of new parents better, we can work towards interventions that support parents’ well-being at this important time of their lives.

We aim to investigate whether it is possible to obtain methylation data on the stored G0 placentas.

Gambling disorder (persistent/recurrent gambling) can be harmful to health/social wellbeing. Previous research suggests that stressful life events, such as child maltreatment increase likelihood of gambling disorder. However, these studies rely on young adults remembering if stressful life events that happened long ago, rather than asking about these events close to when they happened. We also do not know much about the influence of other types of Adverse Childhood Experiences (e.g. parental mental health problems). We plan to look at the influence of a range of Adverse Childhood Experiences on gambling disorder, using data that have followed individuals up regularly since birth until their 30's.

Our proposal will exploit longitudinal neuroimaging to evaluate how brain maturation is linked with subclinical psychotic experiences. We have recently developed a method that allows us to identify abnormal maturational trajectories by computing brain centiles (analogous to pediatric growth charts). Applying this methodology to neuroimaging data from individuals with varying levels of psychosis will provide a more complete picture of how this condition progresses in the context of a normative population. Using ALSPAC data from subjects with psychotic experiences will enable us to study how early brain alterations are linked with an initial set of subclinical symptoms and will shed light on how these structural alterations compare to those seen in clinically diagnosed psychotic disorders in the context of a large-scale, multi-study framework.

Multimorbidity is the presence of multiple long-term health conditions. People with multimorbidity tend to have worse quality of life, and to be high users of the health service. Mental-physical multimorbidity (MPMM) is a specific form of multimorbidity, typically defined as the presence of at least one mental health condition and at least one physical health condition. People who experience MPMM have more complex health needs than people with only physical health problems or only mental health problems. Each set of health problems may make the challenges of the other set worse, leading to worse quality of life for these patients. Poverty and other measures of deprivation are strongly linked to MPMM, making it a key driver of health inequality.

Research on MPMM is limited, but most studies that do exist focus on adults. However, data from primary care records suggest that 2.5% of 10-19 year olds and 11.1% of 20-29 year olds have MPMM. The true level of MPMM in children and young people will be much higher than this, as many health conditions, particularly mental health conditions, are poorly recorded in health records. Children and young people who already have MPMM are likely to go on to experience complex health needs across their life course, and represent a challenging group for the health service. Understanding who comprises this group, and the determinants and consequences (both for the health service and for the young people themselves) is crucial to identify potential intervention points to reduce the incidence of MPMM and to mitigate its adverse consequences.

In this project, we use birth-cohort data from three studies in the UK and Brazil to explore how and when MPMM occurs in children and young people, estimating the prevalence of overall MPMM and of specific combinations of health conditions. We will also examine the causal determinants of MPMM, and the consequences for young people (including education, employment, pain, health-risk behaviours, and wellbeing) and the health service. Studying both causes and consequences will allow us to reach conclusions about potential intervention targets both for preventing MPMM and for mitigating its adverse effects, and to quantify the potential gains from interventions to prevent MPMM or supporting young people with MPMM. Using data from both a high income country and a middle income country allows us to explore setting-specific patterns, causes, and consequences of MPMM – essential for understanding how tailored interventions must be to the local setting. Using birth cohort data allows us to circumvent the problems of under ascertainment of health conditions in administrative health records; linked health data in the UK cohorts will allow us to quantify this problem.