Through a large international collaboration, we identified more than a thousand genetic factors that are associated with how much of a person’s weight is fat mass and how much is lean mass. We subdivided these genetic factors into six groups based on how they affect multiple aspects of body size, composition and shape (e.g., body mass index, height, waist-to-hip circumference). These six clusters of genetic factors each have distinct effects on obesity-related diseases, such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. In addition, we found that the clusters also had differential effects on body size at birth and in childhood. We would like to use the data from the ALSPAC study to investigate if these six groups of genetic factors affect trajectories of body size and composition throughout the development of a child, from birth until early adulthood.

Sexual assault (SA) is a key risk factor for the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other psychiatric disorders. However, despite the ubiquity of sexual assault, many individuals do not develop any PTSD or other psychiatric disorders. Predicting which individuals may be at higher risk of PTSD, and identifying clinical and biological factors that lead to resilience or disease risk will be vital to developing new treatments and therapies, and in matching patients to appropriate, timely interventions. We propose to use environmental, genetic and methylation data from the ALSPAC cohort, to identify the key factors influencing psychiatric disease risk and resilience after sexual assault.

Many adults in the United Kingdom suffer from psychological distress. Psychological distress can range from worrying a lot, to feeling down, to even more serious problems. Importantly, existing research suggests that adults with psychological difficulties often also have behavioural problems as children. Understanding how psychological distress develops is a crucial first step in helping us (i) identify which children are most at risk and (ii) develop targeted strategies to prevent or manage such problems. The reasoning here is that if we can prevent the development of psychological distress in childhood, these children will be less likely to show psychological distress as adults.

We already know that children who show conduct problems (e.g. fighting, lying, stealing) tend to come from riskier circumstances. For example, these children can have mothers with psychological difficulties. Moreover, mothers that have psychological difficulties tend to live in deprived neighbourhoods (e.g. poverty, crime, pollution, low access to greenspace such as parks with trees and grass). Here, the idea is that neighbourhood deprivation can associate with maternal psychological difficulties and family dysfunction, which in turn, can lead to less consistent, stimulating and more punitive parenting behaviours, and poorer child behavioural outcomes. However, characteristic of the parent(s), such as education, employment and psychological distress can play a role in the type of neighbourhood a child grows up in. These characteristics can also affect how vulnerable a parent is to stress-inducing features of the neighbourhood, and therefore could potentially affect the type of parenting used on a child.

During adolescence, youth spend less time with their families and more time “hanging out” with their peer groups (or friends). Therefore, youth are more directly exposed to the neighbourhood, including both structural (e.g. poverty, pollution, distance from green space) and social (crime and deviant peers) deprivation factors. Similar to the mothers, individual characteristics of a teenager can increase the likelihood that individual will be exposed to risk factors in the neighbourhood. Here, impulsivity (i.e., acting without thinking, thrill seeking) can influence the type of social environments for which an adolescent actively seeks out. Indeed, high impulsivity can lead to affiliation with other teenagers who are engaging in delinquent behaviours (e.g. fighting, lying, stealing), which in turn, can increase a teenager’s substance use, unsafe sexual activity and criminal behaviours. Thus, during adolescence, the individual characteristics of youth may associate with risk-related behaviours within the neighbourhood context.

To date, however, existing studies have not teased out the specific biological mechanisms that could explain how neighbourhood deprivation might relate to punitive parenting for the mother, or to a teenager “hanging” out with a deviant peer group. One potentially important biological factor of this kind is a ‘polygenic score’. A polygenic score gives you a genetic risk for some type of trait (e.g. depression, thrill seeking) or disease (e.g. cancer). These scores are based very large studies, sometimes over 1 million people, that show associations between traits or disease with genetic variants across the entire known genome. These different variants and then summed into a single “polygenic score” in smaller, independent studies.

In this study we plan to address two key potential limitations of existing research: (1) Existing studies have not examined how maternal polygenic risk for depression can affect harsh parenting and child conduct problems, particularly if living within high neighbourhood deprivation. (2) Existing studies have not assessed adolescent polygenic risk for externalising problems and impulsivity (e.g. ADHD, sensation seeking) associates with higher affiliation deviant peer affiliation, particularly if living within high neighbourhood deprivation.

This study will address each of these main limitations of the existing research. We are ideally placed to achieve these aims as we have access to psychological, parenting, behavioural, friendship and genetic data already collected from two very large scale samples of children, extensively studied from childhood and into adolescence (The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, in Southwest England and Generation R, Rotterdam, The Netherlands).

We hope that results from this research will help answer questions around why some caregivers are more likely to use punitive parenting, and why children are more likely to have conduct problems, and guide early intervention for high-risk children who may be prone to impulsive and thrill seeking behaviours.

Five percent of school age children have developmental coordination disorder (DCD). People with DCD find tasks such as throwing a ball, writing, or brushing their teeth extremely difficult, and are more likely to struggle academically even though they are just as smart. Despite being extremely common, we understand little of why some children get DCD.
We know that sometimes DCD can run in families but we don't understand the causes of this. This study will be the first to look for these inherited causes. We will use genetic data from the ALSPAC cohort to find genes that are underlying DCD. This will help us to understand how these genes affect the pathways that are required in a developing brain.
We will also use this genetic information to help us understand why some children go on to develop other difficulties like ADHD or language problems, whereas other children do not. We can look into how these behaviours interact with the movement and planning difficulties seen in DCD, and whether they are important in the development of these behaviours in typically developing children.

Understanding mental illness is key to ensuring individuals remain mentally healthy across the life course. This study aims to explore the genetic and environmental factors underlying the mental health of victims of bullying. Individuals subjected to bullying are at a greater risk of later mental health issues. Our study will consider whether an increased genetic risk to depression influences the impact of adolescent bullying on later mental health. We will use available data from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) on depression to construct polygenic scores. These scores will be used to predict the mental health of victims following adolescent bullying, allowing us to test whether polygenic scores can discriminate the resilient from the non-resilient. Investigating why some people may avoid mental health problems after experiences of bullying could hold important implications for the prevention and treatment of victimisation and depression.

As we go into our next funding period we are thinking about how we can collect data efficiently and to help develop the best strategy to ensure that as many participants respond to our questionnaires and attend clinics as possible. We would like to include some questions in the next questionnaire to the original study children (and ideally their parents as well) in order to help develop that strategy. We will also gather some basic sociodemographic information to determine whether there are any differences in responses. This will help us to determine whether we should target particular groups of the population in different ways. We would also like to randomise participants to receive the Q completion incentive as they do now (i.e. automatically) or opt-in (i.e. incentive is sent on request)

Recent research studies estimate approximately 75-80% of autistic individuals will experience mental health problems during their lifetime, compared to 25% of the non-autistic population (Autistica, 2018). Additional mental health problems add burden to those with ASD, their carers and their wider family. Research highlighting the elevated rates of suicide and self-harm among those with ASD make clear the extent and possible effects of mental health difficulties for this group, with research by both Cassidy et al. (2014) and Culpin et al. (2018) identifying depression as a key factor in the suicidal ideation and self-harm shown by those on the autism spectrum.

Current knowledge of mental health problems in ASD is patchy, inconsistent and often contradictory, owing in part on the reliance on clinic-based samples and non-systematic assessments of difficulties. In order to gain a more accurate picture of the rates and patterns of additional mental health problems, population-based research is needed. The proposed study aims to provide a comprehensive secondary data analysis of the existing information on mental health problems accompanying ASD in five population-based studies. The study aims to examine the types of mental health problems experienced by those with ASD, the developmental course of difficulties, risk and protective factors, possible gender differences (including issues surrounding later diagnosis for females) and impact on wellbeing and life outcomes, with the hope of improving recognition and treatment of mental health in ASD.

Secondary data analysis has been chosen to tackle this topic area as a wide range of studies have included measures of mental health and ASD as part of research programmes and these data are available to be examined, thereby negating the need to cause potential burden or stress to those with ASD by creating new studies to focus specifically on this area. In addition, combining existing datasets will give an unprecedented sample size, giving greater statistical power to provide valid results.

Iodine is required for the production of thyroid hormones which are essential for hearing function and ear development during pregnancy. While severe iodine deficiency in pregnancy is known to cause deafness (as in cretinism), less is known about the effect of mild-to-moderate iodine deficiency on hearing function. In the UK, pregnant women are classified as mildly-to-moderately iodine deficient and we have previously shown in the ALSPAC cohort that this is significantly associated with lower IQ and reading scores at 8-9 years.