Pregnancy is a vulnerable period when the foetus undergoes rapid development; therefore, exposure to adverse risk factors can have lifelong implications. Use of medicines during pregnancy is avoided where possible but is sometimes unavoidable. Whilst acute adverse effects following foetal exposure in utero have been assessed for several medicines, possible longer-term effects are not well understood. In particular, their effect on dental and oral outcomes is poorly understood. Using ALSPAC health data will enable us to do novel research to improve our understanding of the effects of taking medication during pregnancy on the child’s oral and dental health and development.

Weight bearing physical activity is known to be beneficial for bone health. Predicting future bone health from accelerometer data may be useful to inform targeted interventions. We will use machine learning and statistical approaches to determine the extent to which bone health can be predicted from physical activity measured with accelerometers.

The Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) consortium is an international organization founded to facilitate large-scale genetic studies among multiple large and well-characterised groups of participants.

The goal of the CHARGE studies is to identify susceptibility genes involved in diseases of the heart, lung, and blood and their risk factors.
In our study, we will analyse the association of gene variants with blood pressure, considering the effect of the educational level in ALSPAC participants. The results will be combined with results from other groups of participants around the world to be able to identify new gene variants that help understand the biology of blood pressure.

Over the past three decades, there has been a substantial increase in the prevalence of mental disorders, which remain a leading cause of disease burden worldwide. Mental disorders in adulthood are found associated with poorer overall health and quality of life. Cardiometabolic mechanisms have been implicated in mental illness. For example, overweight and obese individuals are also more likely to be diagnosed with mental illness. Furthermore, perinatal depression and anxiety in mothers can influence offspring's cardiometabolic health and neurodevelopment. However, the effectiveness of parental interventions to improve offspring’s health outcomes is not conclusively established. Given these gaps in knowledge, the transgenerational effects of parental health warrant a more comprehensive investigation. In this project, we will use the ALSPAC cohort to investigate the transgenerational effects of parental cardiometabolic and mental health on offspring’s development. We will also investigate potential mediating pathways via early-life environmental and molecular mechanisms. This project will contribute to identifying potential targets for intervention and critical windows for interventions.

Led by Universities of Bristol, Edinburgh and University College London, and in collaboration with academic, industry and government partners from across the UK, the Centre aims to dramatically improve understanding of health and wellbeing by revolutionising how researchers can use and access data.

The rise of the internet and digital technologies such as mobile phones and wearable technology like smart watches over the last few decades has meant that more data than ever before has been collected about us. This data can reveal important information about who we are and what we do. These types of data are called Smart Data. Historically, much of the data used by researchers into how our actions and behaviours might affect our health and wellbeing has been collected through studies called Longitudinal Population Studies (LPSs). These studies typically run for many decades, and follow the same individuals through the course of their lives which can show how behaviours and health change over a long period of time. The methods for collecting information in LPSs do not normally use Smart Data, and most major studies of this type began before it was available. Both Smart Data and LPS data can provide different types of vital information about how our actions can affect our health, but these two types of data are not often joined up. Our Centre aims to integrate Smart Data into LPSs and will enable researchers to understand and answer questions about health and wellbeing that were previously unattainable through separate efforts.

The Centre will support bringing together Smart Data derived from our everyday interactions with digital services—such as shopping records, wearable sensors, environmental data, banking, and apps—together with the rich Longitudinal Population Studies’ data linked to health and other administrative data in the UK Longitudinal Linkage Collaboration (UK LLC) Trusted Research Environment, supporting cutting edge research for public good. Our ultimate objective is to seamlessly integrate Smart Data into the UK's Longitudinal Population Studies (LPS, or Studies) and make it available to researchers with other key datasets, thereby establishing a pioneering Centre for Longitudinal Smart Data. Through this innovative approach, we will create a platform that will allow scientists to uncover fresh perspectives on lifelong health and wellbeing, enriching our comprehension of people’s health, behaviours and how they change over time. This novel approach holds the potential to transform how we understand and address societal and health challenges.

Our initiative tackles various challenges concerning participant acceptance, ethical considerations, legal frameworks, and beyond. With participants' consent as a cornerstone, the Centre for Longitudinal Smart Data is designed to offer secure access to a diverse range of research-ready Smart Data for authorised researchers. Through close collaboration with study participant advisory groups, we ensure that the use of Smart Data aligns with the preferences and priorities of the participants themselves. This approach prioritises transparency, accountability, and respect for individual choices, fostering a culture of responsible data usage and research ethics.

The Centre establishes a Community of Practice, bringing together experts to tackle the hurdles linked to individual-level Smart Data within the UK's Longitudinal Population Studies. It will strive to foster opportunities for studies across various domains, including wellbeing, health, sustainability, productivity, and digital society.

The fetal and developmental origins of disease hypothesis suggests that pre-conception (maternal and paternal) and intrauterine (maternal) prenatal factors can influence postnatal health, including growth and adiposity. Birth weight is a marker of intrauterine growth and has been associated with risk of overweight and obesity, as have preterm birth, and small and large for gestational age. To the best of our knowledge, no study has investigated the association between continuous birthweight (for gestational age) centiles beyond the traditional thresholds for small or large for gestational age and longitudinal growth throughout infancy and childhood. This study will address this evidence gap.

Infertility affects 1 in 6 couples. With increasing numbers of assisted reproductive technology (ART) conceptions, understanding the effects of ART on maternal and offspring health has been designated a major research priority. Research to date has been highlighted as having limited quality and lacking methodological transparency. In ART-HEALTH we use a robust, systematic approach of triangulating different sources of evidence to address this.

Previous research has shown that harms associated with gambling are wide-ranging, including harms to the individual who gambles and harms to those close to them such as family, friends and colleagues. Gambling harms can manifest in financial, relationship, mental health and cultural problems, impacting individuals across a range of domains. There is evidence that gambling harms affect different groups disproportionately, placing the highest burden on those that are already marginalised and increasing social, economic and health inequalities across society. Despite evidence of this disproportionate experience of gambling harms, there has only recently been a shift in the focus of research away from a ‘catch all’ approach to a focus on the intersections with other harms and inequalities. One major intersection of gambling harm risk is neurodiversity. In this project, we will use data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) to investigate the experience of gambling harms by individuals who are neurodiverse and explore how these differ to those experienced by neurotypical individuals.

This project seeks to develop a non-invasive, human biomonitoring method to assess human exposure to anthropogenically sourced chemicals. In our day to day lives, humans are exposed to a mixture of “man-made” chemicals from the materials we touch, the food we eat or air we breathe. Some of these environmental pollutants may persist and accumulate in the human body, with potentially harmful or unknown health implications. Such chemicals may include pesticides, commercial drugs, flame retardants, combustion products of fuels, plasticisers or cosmetic components. Aside from accumulation in the blood, which would require invasive sampling to assess exposure, some of these anthropogenic chemicals can accumulate in human hair or nails. The focus of this pilot study is to develop an extraction procedure, to separate the target chemicals from hair, and optimised analytical approaches for chemical identification and quantification. For this, hair samples are required for method development. There is potential for this developed method to incentivise funding for additional sampling and analysis of a larger study group. A broader biomonitoring survey may provide valuable insight into chemical exposure sources and persistence both temporally and regionally. Monitoring exposure of chemicals with recognised human health implications may also provide new insight into the incidence of illness and disease.