Proposal summaries
B41 - Year 3 Schools Project - 01/11/2001
(No outline received).
B40 - Exposure to air pollution and respiratory illness in young children - 01/11/2001
(No outline received).
B288 - Maternal cholesterol during gestation Low maternal serum cholesterol in early pregnancy as a predictor of adverse birth outcome - 01/10/2001
Cholesterol is an essential morphogenetic cofactor in developmental pathways that pattern the central nervous system during gastrulation and early embryogenesis. Adequate cholesterol is also an essential substrate for the rapid growth of neural tissues in the embryo and for synthesizing pregnancy-related steroid hormones. These critical morphogenetic events begin at embryonic day 14, prior to the establishment of a blood-brain barrier or feto-placental circulation, indicating that the embryo's early requirements may depend on uptake from the maternal circulation. Mothers with abnormally low levels of either total serum cholesterol or any essential lipoprotein fraction during the peri-conceptional period may be unable to supply the developing embryo with adequate cholesterol during this critical phase, resulting in pregnancy loss or the birth of infants with microcephaly and/or neuro-developmental disorders.
Specifically, we predict that mothers whose earliest prenatal total serum cholesterol value is within the lowest 5% of the study cohort will have an excess rate of pregnancy loss and an excess rate of microcephaly and of developmental delay in their offspring. The ALSPAC cohort is ideal for testing this hypothesis, because the number of study participants and the comprehensive pre-and post-natal data obtained from them permit an unbiased, carefully adjusted evaluation of the study hypothesis.
B37 - Maternal caffeine consumption during pregnancy and reproductive outcome - 01/10/2001
(No outline received).
B36 - The impact of air pollution on early life - 01/10/2001
(No outline received).
B35 - The demand and supply of schooling - 01/10/2001
(No outline received).
B34 - The determination of affective and cognitive outcomes of primary school children in Avon - 01/10/2001
The children in the ALSPAC cohort are now entering secondary school. The work already done in establishing the dataset means that there is now a unique opportunity to study in robust, quantitative and ground-breaking terms a number of crucial issues in the educational development of UK children. These studies will have important scientific benefits and implications for current and future Government policy. However, it is necessary to move quickly if the opportunity of putting the appropriate questions to the right individuals at the right times is not to be lost.
Other data collection will be occurring in ALSPAC through this phase, particularly in the fields of psychiatry and medicine and the investments made by related funding councils and others provide a platform for investments in educational research using ALSPAC.
A particular focus of the secondary school data collection in ALSPAC will be the motivation, engagement and attainments of pupils. Data collection will also concentrate on the impact on these aspects of development of family, school, policy and wider social factors. Planned reforms to the British education system for 14-19 year olds can be monitored by their impacts on this cohort of children. Social class differences in the process of engagement, choice and attainment of pupils can also be examined and quantified.
B30 - Prevalence of disability and the influence of maternal thyroid hormone levels in pregnancy - 01/09/2001
(No outline received).
B9 - The genetic factors influencing the development of asthma and atopy in different European centres - 01/09/2001
(No proposal form received).
B29 - Risk factors for obesity in contemporary children - 01/09/2001
(No outline received).
B26 - Early onset eating psychopathy - collision between satiety and constraint - 01/08/2001
(No outline received).
B25 - The SPINK gene and eczema - 01/08/2001
(No outline received).
B24 - A gene-environment study of infection susceptibility in pre-term delivery - 01/08/2001
B22 - Cadmium exposure and renal damage in adults and children living near zinc smelter in Avonmouth - 01/08/2001
(No outline received).
B20 - Long-term effects of early postnatal stress - 01/08/2001
Specific aims of this research are to a) examine the long-term effects of prenatal anxiety on dimensional and diagnostic measures of psychopathology in early adolescence; b) assess the role of the HPA axis underlying the links between prenatal anxiety on adolescent psychopathology and stress vulnerability; c) test competing hypotheses concerning the processes by which prenatal anxiety has direct, mediated or moderated effects on adolescent psychopathology; and d) test the hypothesis that the effects of prenatal anxiety/stress on behavioral/emotional problems in early adolescence are moderated by genetic risk.
B18 - Determinants consequences of total energy expenditure and energy expended on physical activity in a representative contemporary sample of 10/11 year olds - 01/08/2001
(No outline received).
B14 - A comparison of parental questionnaires and a system of professional child health surveillance in identifying developmental impairments - 01/07/2001
This project will investigate how well parents and health professionals can identify developmental problems in preschool children, using the ALSPAC study, a total birth cohort of 14,138 children born in 1991-2.
We will test whether parents are the first to identify impairments in their children and whether questionnaires can be an effective method of selecting children for further professional assessment in the pre-school period.
B12 - Vegetarian diet and health - 01/07/2001
(No outline received).
B11 - The ALSPAC cell lines - 01/07/2001
The overall aim of this grant was to create a Lymphoblastoid Cell Line (LCL) collection from children and parents participating in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC). The study has collected data on a scale and with a richness unprecedented in the field of epidemiological study and the generation of the cell line bank would provide material for further genetic, gene expression and metabolomic research.
Development of the resource initially involved establishing a cell culture facility with robotic cell maintenance systems, development of a bespoke Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) and development of protocols for the transformation and growth of LCLs. Once these systems were in place LCL production would become a routine laboratory procedure enabling cell lines to be produced from all cohort members who consented to cell line production.
B10 - Blood pressure central obesity and insulin sensitivity in early childhood - associated with adrenal function birthweight and early growth - 01/07/2001
At UCLH we run a nationally used service for investigation of adrenal disease based on urine steroid analysis. We frequently get referred samples from children with early pubertal development which we attribute to adrenarche. From epidemiological studies we have conducted in collaboration with Professor Baker in Southampton we have examined changes in adrenal function in 9 year old children in Salisbury. In 24 hour urine collections both adrenal androgen and cortisol metabolites were quantified. Urinary androgen excretion was higher in children who had been light at birth. A 1 kg decrease in birthweight was associated with a 40% increase in androgen excretion. In contrast the relationship with urinary cortisol excretion was U-shaped with higher outputs at the extremes of birthweight. Birthweight was associated with metabolite output independent of current weight, gender and gestational age at birth, indicating that the HPA function was related to fetal growth rather than prematurity. A reduced birth size has also been associated with cardiovascular disease risk and insulin-dependent diabetes. High blood pressure and cardiac hypertrophy may be the consequence of the hyperactive adrenal secreting both cortisol and adrenal androgens from early puberty.
In children with asthma at 8 years of age there is absence of adrenal androgen output. This leads to a reduction in growth rate such that asthmatic children at this stage are shorter than their peers. As they go into puberty they catch-up on the lost height. Loss of adrenal androgens is a feature of many sytemic illnesses (severe burns, HIV and AIDS) and may be linked with states of immune suppression. Children with diabetes would be another group worth investigating.
In keeping with the objectives of the ALSPAC study these children would be worth studying in the same way with the aim of clarifying:
* Adrenal function in relation to birth weight
* Adrenal function in relation to parental adrenal function
* Adrenal function in asthmatic children
In addition to examining the balance of adrenal androgens and cortisol the urine data can be examined to establish whether changes would be due to increased circulating levels or due to changes in the degradative process for cortisol through it's metabolism to inactive cortisone. Thus metabolites of cortisol and cortisone will be examined along with the excretion rates of the free hormones themselves.
24 hour urine samples would be desirable from the children and their parents in order to assess cortisol and adrenal androgen productions.