Dietary patterns during pregnancy and childhood neurodevelopmental. This work is to be the international part of a PhD based in Brazil during this time experience will be gained working in Bristol.

The maternal diet can affect the infant neurodevelopmental (del Rio Garcia et al., 2009; Bernard et al., 2013). The ALSPAC study was explored and there are some studies that assessed the maternal dietary intake of fatty acids (Hibbeln et al., 2007; Hibbeln and Davis, 2009) and 'healthy' and 'unhealthy' food groups (Barker et al., 2013) with childhood neurodevelopmental deficiencies. Dietary patterns have been used in some studies to assess the relationship between diet and health outcomes, because they represent an overview of food and nutrient consumption (Slattery, 2010; Tucker, 2010).

Aim: To obtain clusters of dietary patterns during pregnancy and to examine the association between these dietary patterns and neurodevelopmental outcomes in childhood.

Hypotheses: The adherence to dietary patterns composed by healthy foods can reduce the risk of neurodevelopmental outcomes during the childhood, while the patterns composed by processed food can increase the risk of neurodevelopmental outcomes.

Exposure variable(s): Dietary patterns during pregnancy obtained by cluster analysis.

Outcome variable(s): Neurodevelopmental outcomes in child previously explored in Hibbeln et al. (2007) study. Including clinic measured IQ and parental questionnaire assessed Denver Developmental Screening Test and Strengths & Difficulties.

Confounding variable(s): Maternal education, social class, age at delivery, parity, energy intake, BMI. Child's date of birth, birth weight, sex, gestational age, breastfeeding, child diet at the time of assessment.

We plan to write at least 2 papers as a result of this work. We also have a comparable Brazilian cohort and aim to do some work comparing outcomes in Brazil with ALSPAC outcomes as appropriate.