Adolescents are more likely to become dissatisfied with their body as they could be more easily influenced by their peers and media and internalize bodily norms. In order to alter their body, adolescents may use several strategies such as restrained eating or dieting. Eating restraint and dieting during adolescence could interfere with physical growth and cognitive development, predispose them to weight gain, prompt disinhibited eating, and increase risk of severe eating disorders. Furthermore, health-related habits such as dieting and eating behaviors tend to persist into adulthood.
There is a gap in research about the associations between a combination of different dimensions of eating behaviors in adolescence and health behaviors in adulthood. This research aims to address this gap by studying how adolescents with distinct profile of eating behavior dimensions, including restrained eating and uncontrolled eating, differ from each other during their adulthood in terms of body composition and food preferences. Findings could assist in identifying adolescents at higher risk of obesity and less healthy food choices with regards to dimensions of eating behavior.

Trauma is a transdiagnostic risk factor for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), major depressive disorder (MDD), increased alcohol use, and alcohol use disorder. Additionally, these conditions tend to co-occur, and are genetically-influenced. Decades of work has emphasized the importance of count, type, and timing of traumatic events on these mental health outcomes. However, most work has not examined these mental health conditions simultaneously and very few have investigated their effects over the course of development. This proposed study will examine the role of trauma characteristics on these outcomes across childhood into adulthood, via the use of multiple longitudinal datasets--ALSPAC, as well as two others (Add Health, a nationally representative sample, and ABCD, a diverse sample of children aged 9-10 across the US). This study will also use cutting edge genetic methods (genomic structural equation modeling-derived polygenic risk scores/PRSs) to examine the genetic influences on these conditions, as well as investigate potential interactions between genetic risk and trauma characteristics.

Becoming a parent is an important life event that has a significant impact on the way that we live our lives.
This project will look at how having a child impacts new parents’ mental health and well-being, by using information about ALSPAC participants before they have had children, and seeing how this changes afterwards.
This will help us to understand which parts of our well-being are affected by having children, when this happens, and why different people react differently to becoming parents.
By understanding the experiences of new parents better, we can work towards interventions that support parents’ well-being at this important time of their lives.

Gambling disorder (persistent/recurrent gambling) can be harmful to health/social wellbeing. Previous research suggests that stressful life events, such as child maltreatment increase likelihood of gambling disorder. However, these studies rely on young adults remembering if stressful life events that happened long ago, rather than asking about these events close to when they happened. We also do not know much about the influence of other types of Adverse Childhood Experiences (e.g. parental mental health problems). We plan to look at the influence of a range of Adverse Childhood Experiences on gambling disorder, using data that have followed individuals up regularly since birth until their 30's.

Child maltreatment and childhood neurodevelopmental disorders (Autism and ADHD) are both associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease and premature mortality in adulthood. Child maltreatment and neurodevelopmental disorders commonly co-occur. Previous work has explored the associations of these exposures individually with adult outcomes but not explored them together. This study aims to explore the association of neurodevelopment and maltreatment with cardiovascular risk factors in young adults, in particular looking for any interaction between the two exposures.

Multimorbidity is the presence of multiple long-term health conditions. People with multimorbidity tend to have worse quality of life, and to be high users of the health service. Mental-physical multimorbidity (MPMM) is a specific form of multimorbidity, typically defined as the presence of at least one mental health condition and at least one physical health condition. People who experience MPMM have more complex health needs than people with only physical health problems or only mental health problems. Each set of health problems may make the challenges of the other set worse, leading to worse quality of life for these patients. Poverty and other measures of deprivation are strongly linked to MPMM, making it a key driver of health inequality.

Research on MPMM is limited, but most studies that do exist focus on adults. However, data from primary care records suggest that 2.5% of 10-19 year olds and 11.1% of 20-29 year olds have MPMM. The true level of MPMM in children and young people will be much higher than this, as many health conditions, particularly mental health conditions, are poorly recorded in health records. Children and young people who already have MPMM are likely to go on to experience complex health needs across their life course, and represent a challenging group for the health service. Understanding who comprises this group, and the determinants and consequences (both for the health service and for the young people themselves) is crucial to identify potential intervention points to reduce the incidence of MPMM and to mitigate its adverse consequences.

In this project, we use birth-cohort data from three studies in the UK and Brazil to explore how and when MPMM occurs in children and young people, estimating the prevalence of overall MPMM and of specific combinations of health conditions. We will also examine the causal determinants of MPMM, and the consequences for young people (including education, employment, pain, health-risk behaviours, and wellbeing) and the health service. Studying both causes and consequences will allow us to reach conclusions about potential intervention targets both for preventing MPMM and for mitigating its adverse effects, and to quantify the potential gains from interventions to prevent MPMM or supporting young people with MPMM. Using data from both a high income country and a middle income country allows us to explore setting-specific patterns, causes, and consequences of MPMM – essential for understanding how tailored interventions must be to the local setting. Using birth cohort data allows us to circumvent the problems of under ascertainment of health conditions in administrative health records; linked health data in the UK cohorts will allow us to quantify this problem.

This project aims to assess the association between DNA methylation and breastfeeding using data from ALSPAC and other birth cohorts with similar data. Breastfeeding has both short and long term beneficial effects on child health. DNA methylation is a molecular mechanism which might mediate the relationship between breast feeding and beneficial health effects in children but we do not yet have good evidence to show if DNA methylation is associated with breast feeding. This research aims to answer this knowledge gap.

Exposure to air pollution has been associated with poorer cardiovascular health and cardiovascular disease, and inflammation is one of the postulated mechanisms of this relationship. Most studies have investigated the association between air pollution and inflammation using C-reactive protein (CRP), particularly in adulthood. Evidence in younger ages and using other inflammatory markers is limited. This study will explore the association between air pollution and inflammation from childhood to early adulthood using different inflammatory markers.

Research suggests that children with autistic symptoms have an increased risk of experiencing symptoms of eating disorders in adolescence. However, it is still not clear which experiences lead to this increased risk. Previous studies have shown that autistic children are more likely to be bullied and have symptoms of depression. These are also plausible risk factors for eating disorders and could be addressed by interventions, but no research has investigated these pathways yet.