LifeCycle is a cross-cohort collaboration which brings together data from pregnancy and child cohorts from across Europe and also Australia to facilitate studies on the influence of early-life exposures on cardio-metabolic, respiratory and mental health outcomes. The end product of this collaboration is a sustainable data resource known as the EU Child Cohort Network.
In the proposed paper we provide a detailed description of the EU Child Cohort Network’s core variables; a set of basic variables, derivable by the majority of participating cohorts and frequently needed as covariates in life-course research. We firstly describe the process adopted to establish a list of core variables and the protocol developed to harmonise these core data, thus making them interoperable. This protocol also defines the harmonisation process adopted generally within LifeCycle. Secondly, we describe the catalogue developed to ensure that all EU Child Cohort Network data are both findable and reusable. Finally, we describe the core data themselves, including the proportion of variables harmonised by each cohort and the number of children with harmonised data.
We would also like to provide some summary statistics (N and % for categorical variables, and N, mean, standard deviation for continuous variables) on some key variables (namely, sex, maternal education at baseline, mother’s ethnic background, mother’s parity, mother’s smoking in pregnancy, size for gestational age, whether the index child was ever breastfed, age of the mother at birth, birth weight and gestational age). These variables have already been harmonised as part of the LifeCycle project. To obtain the requested summary statistics, we have prepared some R code for individual cohorts to run on their harmonised datasets.
The paper is already written and we hope to submit it to the Journal of Epidemiology in the summer.

Anti-sclerostin antibody treatment has recently been licensed as a monthly injection for treating osteoporosis (Evenity), a condition in which bones become fragile and more susceptible to fracture. Though effective at treating osteoporosis, concerns have been raised that Evenity increases the risk of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD) and stroke, either via a direct effect on arteries, or by modifying associated risk factors. This project aims to examine this question, by studying whether circulating levels of sclerostin are related to CVD end-points, related phenotypes and risk factors. This will be achieved by examining these relationships in a range of independent cohorts, including ALSPAC. Furthermore, we aim to triangulate our findings by Mendelian Randomisation, using a genetic instrument for circulating sclerostin which we recently published and are currently refining.