Children often—but not always—retain the religious identities, beliefs, and practices of their parents. This project aims to find patterns in what we call “intergenerational religious transmission”, with a particular focus on parents’ religious denominations, their own religious beliefs and behaviours, their intentions to raise their children in their religious traditions, and their children’s religious beliefs, behaviours, and attitudes during childhood. A secondary purpose is to test the “religious residue” hypothesis over time, which contends that religious deidentifiers still maintain aspects (i.e., residue) of their former religious identities.

Immune dysregulation is thought to be involved in psychiatric disorders, including psychotic and mood disorders (1). Regulatory T cells (Tregs), an important component of the immune system, may have a role when investigating the causes of disorders such as anxiety, depression and psychosis. For example reduced number of Tregs have been found in individuals with disorders including schizophrenia, postpartum psychosis and major depression (2-4). However, the role of immune dysregulation in mood and psychotic symptoms in the general population has not been investigated. Through ALSPAC, we will investigate whether Treg sensitive genes are more common in individuals who have reported mood and psychotic symptoms, including post-partum depression. In combination with follow up experiments, this project will help us understand whether immune dysregulation is a risk factor for mood and psychotic symptoms.

The last decade has seen a dramatic improvement in our understanding of how our genes affect our height, body mass index (BMI), mental health, cancer risk, and many other traits. This has been facilitated by technological developments which allow us to measure a persons’ epigenetic data accurately and economically. Almost all epigenetic studies investigate traits collected at a single timepoint (e.g. adult height), and the epigenetic sites associated with these traits are then found using an epigenome wide association study (EWAS). However, some traits such as BMI change over time, and the epigenetics of these repeatedly measured traits remain poorly understood. This project will apply new approaches for epigenetic analysis of longitudinal traits - in particular BMI measured repeatedly from birth to adulthood and depressive symptoms from later childhood through adolescence.

The smoking score was developed in the Raine Study (partner: University of Western Australia/Telethon Kids Institute, Perth, Western Australia) and the Northern Finland Birth Cohorts 1986 and 1966 (partner: University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland). For the score development, DNA methylation data measured with the Illumina HumanMethylation450 BeadChip array was utilized, together with a binary variable, indicating if the study participant’s mother was smoking during pregnancy.

Our hypothesis is that the smoking score captures and quantifies latent information on early life exposure. We also hypothesize that it quantifies the persistent changes that occur systemically in the offspring with maternal smoking exposure in utero.

Our Future Health will collect information from up to 5 million volunteers from across the UK to create one of the most detailed pictures we’ve ever had of people’s health. Researchers will be able to use this information to discover more effective ways to prevent, detect and treat diseases. As part of the programme, genetic information will be extracted from blood samples collected from the volunteers, using a new genetic test which will give information on over 600,000 genetic variants (DNA which may vary from person to person). Before it can be used, however, the test will require preliminary accuracy checks and other comparisons on a collection of samples where the correct genetic information is already known. We propose to conduct these checks on a set of 1800 samples from the ALSPAC cohort, which have established cell-lines for DNA extraction and whole genome sequence information as part of the UK10K programme. These samples will be tested by the supplier of the genetic test, and the results sent to Our Future Health for comparison against the reference genetic information. For any genetic variants that do not meet our pre-specified level of accuracy, this part of the test will be re-designed by the supplier and the assessments repeated. This work will help to ensure that the Our Future Health genetic tests are as accurate as possible, and through the Our Future Health programme will contribute to research to prevent, detect and treat disease for decades to come.

Osteoporosis is a common age-related condition with a strong genetic component. Osteoporotic fractures significantly contribute to disease burden and costs. Whilst a number of genes responsible have been identified, many gene variants each contribute to the disease but each with subtle effect.
Previous GEnetic Factors for OSteoporosis Consortium (GEFOS) study identified a number of BMD-related loci using a genome-wide association study (GWAS). As part of this collaboration, an ongoing meta-analysis of four DXA-derived BMD traits is being conducted. Cohorts previously involved as well as new and updated cohorts are being invited to take part in this effort.

Cancer is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Its burden is expected to increase in the coming years as populations age and increase their exposure to unhealthy lifestyle factors. Most research on cancer aetiology has been conducted in adult populations. This has led to the identification of well-established risk factors in adulthood, such as smoking and obesity. Nevertheless, it is still unclear whether cancer risk may be influenced by early life exposures. Furthermore, the mechanisms by which early life exposures may influence cancer risk have not been fully elucidated. They possibly involve inflammation, changes in the microbiome, metabolism, insulin resistance, hormonal factors and epigenetic modifications. Therefore, the aim of this project will be to identify novel early life risk factors and molecular markers for the prevention of cancer.

Numerous studies have shed light on the effects of maternal smoking during pregnancy on the offsprings’ health outcomes. In particular, maternal smoking during pregnancy was found to be associated with lower offspring birthweight. Previous studies normally address confounding by adjusting for maternal age, socioeconomic status, breastfeeding and offspring gender. However, concerns about unmeasured confounding biases due to the mother’s lifestyle, the households’ socioeconomic status, and mother’s genotypes still remain.

The negative control method is a recently popularized approach that utilizes measured covariates as proxies of unmeasured confounders, in order to detect, reduce and correct for confounding bias. This method may help eliminate the confounding bias when studying the causal effect of maternal smoking on child birth weight. For example, paternal alcohol consumption during the mother’s pregnancy can serve as a potential negative control variable since it’s a proxy of the household’s socioeconomic status but shouldn’t directly affect the offspring’s birth weight. Therefore, any observed association between paternal alcohol consumption and the child’s birth weight is likely a result of confounding bias. Other negative control variables may include negative control exposures (NCEs) such as mother’s smoking behavior after giving birth, and negative control outcomes (NCOs) such as the child’s injuries since age 9.

In this project, we will utilize multiple negative control variables to obtain a more accurate estimate of the causal effect of maternal smoking during pregnancy on infants’ birthweight with the ALSPAC data.

The project will investigate the impact that the transition to parenthood has on wellbeing. In particular, the project will focus on understanding how becoming a parent impacts individuals’ happiness, life satisfaction and meaning in life using a longitudinal design.
Research investigating the impact of parenthood on wellbeing produces mixed findings. Some findings indicate that parenthood is associated with detrimental effects on wellbeing (Stanca, 2012), whilst others have suggested that parenthood is associated with improved aspects of wellbeing (Nelson et al., 2013). However, the research investigating the effects of parenthood on wellbeing is difficult to summarise, due to the varying definitions of wellbeing that are used within the literature and the different means of operationalising the term. For example, studies have measured wellbeing by examining symptoms of depression, alcohol abuse, happiness, life satisfaction and frequency of positive and negative emotions. Therefore, this study aims to look at how parenthood effects different aspects of wellbeing individually as there may be differential effects of parenthood on happiness, life satisfaction, and meaning in life. Prior studies have found that parents have higher levels of meaning in life than non-parents (Nelson et al., 2013). However, there are more mixed findings regarding happiness and life satisfaction (Umberson & Gove, 1989). Therefore, the findings regarding the relationship between parenthood and wellbeing do not represent one construct and making concluding statements about parenthood and wellbeing would fail to acknowledge the discrepancies among how wellbeing has been measured and defined.
Previous research has suggested that the relationship between parenthood and wellbeing differs depending on gender, relationship status and financial strain on the parent. It has been reported that mothers experience poorer wellbeing in comparison to fathers (Nelson et al., 2019). Parents who are married may have better wellbeing in comparison to single parents because of the proposed benefits such as division of labour in the home and for parenting tasks (Cunningham & Knoester, 2007). Stanca (2012) also reported that parenthood negatively impacts life satisfaction due to a lack of financial satisfaction and increased financial strain associated with parenthood. Whether the individual is a first-time parent may also be important to investigate because experiences of parenting might not match prior expectations with consequences for mental health in new parents (Harwood et al., 2007).