A healthy placenta is important for a healthy pregnancy and birth of a healthy baby. Some research shows that a larger placenta is associated with a healthier baby at birth. The placenta is normally weighed after the birth of the baby. This is too late to change things during the pregnancy that might help improve the mothers and baby’s health. The size of the placenta can be measured using ultrasound scans during pregnancy. If we can show that the size of the placenta is an accurate way of identifying women who might be at risk of having health problems during pregnancy and with their baby at birth, and that ultrasound measures of the placenta are accurate measures of its size, it might be possible to prevent problems for mother and her baby.

We would like to access the Children of the 90s and their parents’ genetic data and some imaging and blood biomarker information in order to characterise “favourable adiposity” genes. By this we mean versions of genes (alleles) that result in a higher BMI and body fat but lower risk of diseases such as type 2 diabetes, hypertension and heart disease. Current studies have already identified 14 alleles associated with higher body fat % but lower risk of these diseases. We know that some of these “favourable adiposity” genes operate by putting more fat in the lower body, resulting in a lower waist to hip ratio (“pear” rather than “apple” shape) in women. Using MRI imaging from adults, we know that these alleles add more fat under the skin (subcutaneous) but less fat to the liver. These genes have been discovered in adults, and we would now like to test what they are doing in childhood and adolescents in the CO90s. To do this, we’d like to link the gene variants we are finding in adults to body fat imaging and circulating blood markers at all time points in childhood and adolescence where available. We’d like to analyse the parent’s data to help in the discovery of these genetic variants by analysing with other large studies of adults.

The overarching goal of this project is to study risk factors contributing to common neurodevelopmental disorders (i.e. dyslexia and language impairment). We expect such factor to be both of biological (e.g. genetics) and environmental (e.g. socio-economic status) nature. Building on our previous work, we will take advantage of the rich cognitive and behavioural profiling available for the ALSPAC dataset. Atypical handedness has been consistently reported as a factor contributing to neurodevelopmental disorders. We will use a range of laterality indexes for hand preference to study the genetics of handedness and understand its relationship with disorders. The analysis will be conducted in the context of large international collaborations. The longitudinal dimension of the ALSPAC data will also allow us to study trajectories associated to neurodevelopmental disorders.

The number of eggs in a woman’s ovaries is determined by a) how many eggs she was born with, and b) how quickly they diminish during her lifespan. Because the total number of eggs she will ever have is established while forming in her mother’s womb, it is important to know if there are any factors in that prenatal environment that may affect the development of the eggs within the ovaries. Women with fewer eggs may suffer later in life from infertility or early menopause. Several studies have shown through experiments with animals that paracetamol taken by the mother while pregnant may have harmful effects on the reproductive function of the resulting female offspring. However, no studies have examined this in humans. In animal models, there are three proposed mechanisms for the effects seen in the female offspring: 1) disruption of the chemical signaling from the brain to the ovaries to induce puberty, resulting in earlier age of the onset of periods (which in human studies may be associated with earlier onset of menopause), 2) disruption of the natural menstrual cycle, resulting in shorter menstrual periods (which in human studies may be associated with earlier onset of menopause), and 3) formation of fewer follicles (eggs) in the ovaries, which can be approximated by measurement of anti-mullerian hormone (AMH) in the blood. Given that paracetamol is used worldwide as the analgesic of choice during pregnancy it is of critical importance that large-scale studies of humans be performed to investigate this association. This study will look at children of mothers who did and did not use paracetamol during their pregnancies and compare 1) the age of their first period, 2) how regular their periods are, and 3) their AMH levels.

Lung function curves have been explored mainly using cross-sectional data and for selected age ranges. There is no cohort that covers the full life-course for lung function yet, this is challenged by the time and effort needed to follow individuals from birth to death. The ALEC project gives us a unique opportunity to fit lung function curves longitudinally gathering all the lung function data available among all the cohorts which participated to the ALEC project, in a real world setting.

Parents are believed to strongly influence the health behaviours of their offspring. It is also believed that parents are gatekeepers and function as important role model for the development of offspring health behaviours such as diet, physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleeping. Diets has been considered as one of most important health behaviours that offspring adapt from parents throughout development stages of life including early childhood and adolescent period. In the life course epidemiology, diets has been considered as one of most important modifiable risk factors for the development of cardio-metabolic diseases. Most previous studies on the resemblance of parent-offspring dietary patterns were based on small sample and cross-sectional design. There is no study that considered (1) parent-offspring resemblance from early life to adulthood using repeated measures of parent-offspring diets; (2) whether this resemblance was influenced by other life style factors such as physical activity, sedentary behaviours, and sleeping (3) pathways of the resemblance of dietary trajectories predict the progression of offspring cardio-metabolic risks. Finally, (4) whether the genetic predisposition factors in parent-offspring dietary resemblance also contribute to the development of cardio-metabolic risk.

To our knowledge, this will be the first study to evaluate the parent-offspring dietary resemblance through a longitudinal cohort considering a range of other behavioural factors and genetic predisposition to the progression of cardio-metabolic risk factors throughout the life course. The Knowledge from this study will help to design effective family based early life intervention; identify appropriate target group, and period of intervention for healthy dietary habit as a prevention of later life chronic diseases.

We are interested in differences in DNA methylation patterns among children with medical conditions acquired before or shortly after they were born. These conditions have no known genetic cause, and we think epigenetic phenomena -- like DNA methylation -- may account for some of their symptoms. We already have information about DNA methylation differences; we would like to evaluate our data using information from ALSPAC about how stable DNA methylation might be over time at different sites.

Our team has been studying the relationship between DNA methylation and phynotype for several years.Recently we supposed that child's IQ may be largely effected by DNA methylation. So we want to do the analysis.