Proposal summaries
B40 - Exposure to air pollution and respiratory illness in young children - 01/11/2001
(No outline received).
B38 - The development of sex typed behaviour in boys and girls a longitudinal study from 20 weeks gestation to 12 years - 01/11/2001
We propose a longitudinal, population study investigating biological and psychological processes involved in the development of gender identity, gender role behaviour and sexual orientation.
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).
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).
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).
B17 - Alcohol use during pregnancy child development at 7 years and the influence of genotype on association - 01/07/2001
(No outline received).
B16 - Antibiotic resistance - 01/07/2001
(No outline received).
B15 - The genetic environmental aetiology of anxiety in mothers - 01/07/2001
(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.