Proposal summaries
B3754 - The relationship between timing of menarche and risky behaviours in early adulthood - 01/04/2021
There is some evidence that girls who experience an earlier onset of menarche than their peers are at greater risk of engaging in a range of risky behaviours in adolescence such as: early initiation of sexual activity; substance use, and antisocial behaviour. Early maturing girls' more mature physical appearance and tendency to affiliate with older peer groups could expose them to increased opportunities for risk taking. It is unclear, however, if the relationship between early timing of menarche and increased risky behaviours persists into later adolescence and early adulthood.
B3743 - Using lifecourse approaches to develop insight into the influence of early life exposures on adverse health outcomes - 16/04/2021
B3745 - The association of adverse childhood experiences with persistent pain in adolescents analysis of a prospective cohort study - 29/03/2021
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood such as experiencing abuse or neglect; witnessing violence at home; or having a family member incarcerated or addicted to substances such as drugs or alcohol. In the UK, 50% of Welsh adults (Public Health Wales 2018) and 47% of English adults (Bellis et al., 2014) have experienced at least one ACE during childhood. The cumulative effect of multiple, overlapping ACEs, have been shown to increase the risk and severity of chronic conditions including cancer, heart disease and chronic pain including musculoskeletal conditions in adults but we do not know what the effects are more immediately, within childhood and adolescence.
One such consequence of early adversity is chronic and persistent pain and significantly impacts quality of life and well-being (Fisher et al., 2016; Caes et al., 2015; IASP ICD 2016). The strongest evidence for an association comes from Groenewald and colleagues (2020) who investigated in a nationally representative sample of over 48,000 American children and found that those with a history of ACEs had an increased risk of chronic pain. The association increased in a dose-dependent manner and was driven by parental substance misuse ACEs and poverty ACEs.
There has been little attention within longitudinal population-based birth cohort studies, such as ALSPAC, exploring the relationship between comprehensively assessed ACEs and pain in children (Nelson et al., 2017). It would be more clinically relevant to identify the specific ACE types that most contribute to pain outcomes. We could use this to better inform intervention strategies for pain management with meaningful clinical and empirical value in children and adolescents with persistent pain conditions.
B3746 - Associations of prospective and retrospective measures of childhood maltreatment with health outcomes - 29/03/2021
Childhood maltreatment has been consistently associated with poor health outcomes, such as obesity, cardiovascular health, mental health, substance misuse and risky sexual behaviours. There is no gold standard to assess childhood maltreatment, and both prospective and retrospective reports entail potential limitations. A poor agreement has been shown between measures of childhood maltreatment assessed prospectively (usually through parental report and official records) and retrospectively (often self-reported), suggesting that these forms of report of maltreatment identify different groups of individuals. The use of retrospective measures of childhood maltreatment might overestimate the associations with subjectively measured outcomes (e.g. self-reported, such as health behaviours and mental health) and underestimate the associations with objectively measured outcomes (e.g. physical health). However, few studies have information on both prospective and retrospective measures of childhood maltreatment and were able to compared the associations of different types of reports of maltreatment with subjectively and objectively measured health outcomes. This project aims to assess and compare associations of prospectively and retrospectively reported childhood maltreatment with key subjectively and objectively measured health outcomes in early adulthood (e.g. cardiovascular risk factors, mental health, and socioeconomic status).
B3740 - Can parental education compensate childrens genetic disadvantage - 23/03/2021
B3741 - Intergenerational transmission of human capital - 23/03/2021
Our original proposal, B2492, is about the joint development of health, skills and education. From the start, this involved studying the role of genetic and early-life environmental factors in shaping individuals’ health and education trajectories.
This proposal contributes to one of the key aims of our original project: to better understand the role of genes on human capital formation. On the one hand, recent studies have questioned whether the polygenic score for educational attainment captures only a biological mechanism. The proposal makes it possible to quantify the true underlying mechanisms of skills and education. Understanding this process is fundamental to understanding the health-education gradient. On the other hand, studies have shown that the polygenic score for educational attainment affects not only cognitive but also non-cognitive skills. We wish to understand the mechanisms through which genes affect education: are they mediated by cognitive or non-cognitive skills (or both)?
Unraveling the process of human capital transmission over generations is fundamental to uncover the sources of inequality. Understanding the sources of inequality in turn is crucial to design and justify redistribution policies.
The process of human capital transmission is a widely researched topic in economics and social sciences. Given that parents transmit their genes to their children and expose these children to a particular environment at the same time, it is incredibly challenging to disentangle the pathways through which human capital transmission takes place. Researchers have nonetheless tried to quantify the different channels using either structural equations (Lee & Seshadri, 2019), samples of adoptees (Plug, 2004; Björklund et. al, 2006; Plug & Vijverberg, 2003) or samples of twins (Behrman & Rosenzweig, 2002). These solutions rely either on imposing structural assumptions or on natural experiments that allows us to isolate the nature and nurture effects.
With the recent advances of social science genetics we can now have a direct measure of one’s genetic predisposition for a certain trait. Many researchers have studied the genetic propensity for schooling since schooling is a widely available phenotypic measure, and a common proxy for human capital accumulation. However, studies have shown that the Educational Attainment Polygenic Score (EA PGS) also includes an environmental component: genetic nurture (Koellinger & Harden, 2018; Kong et. al 2018). In particular, by using adoptees (Cheesman et. al, 2020), parental genetic information (Kong et. al 2018) and within-family designs (Selzam et. al, 2019), it is estimated that about 50% of the impact of the EA PGS on education attainment is a pure biological signal with the remainder 50% being genetic nurture.
This research attempts to inform the literature of human capital transmission with a direct measure of the genetic predisposition to schooling. In particular, it is an attempt to unveil and quantify the pathways of human capital transmission as proposed theoretically by Lee & Seshadri (2019). This is possible due to the richness of Alspac data set. In particular, we want to exploit the fact that a) it contains genetic information on the child’s mother and father; b) detailed information on educational achievement of the child and parents; c) detailed information of the parental behavior towards the child.
This research will attempt to quantify 5 channels of human capital transmission:
a) Direct genetic transmission
b) Genetic nurture (of the parents)
c) Parental education
d) Parental income
e) Parental time and good investments
Additional analysis will include a differentiation of the impact of those channels on the cognitive and non-cognitive skills of the children. In fact, research suggests that the EA PGS predicts both cognitive and non-cognitive skills (Alloway et. al 2020; Malanchini et. al 2020; Belsky et. al 2016). This matches research that documents that educational attainment itself is largely explained by personality traits (Borghans et. al 2016).
B3742 - Father absence childrens genetic make-up and outcomes - 23/03/2021
Our original proposal, B2492, is about the joint development of health, skills and education. From the start, this involved studying the role of genetic and early-life environmental factors in shaping individuals’ health and education trajectories.
This proposal fits directly within our aim to study the “interactions between genes and family composition”, focussing on the effects of “interactions between genes and family composition on children’s test scores and health behaviours”. Indeed, parental separation implies a drastic change in the family structure and composition, less time investment, as well as mental and financial distress. This has been shown to have a number of consequences for child mental health outcomes. In this paper, we will quantify the extent to which the effects of father absence on child outcomes are modified by children’s genetic predisposition.
Background: Parent separation has been shown to have a number of consequences for the child mental health outcomes. On the other hand there are a number of studies on the effects of father involvement and paternity leave policy on children. In this paper, we would like to contribute to the literature by showing how the effects of father absence on child outcomes are modified by children’s genetic predisposition for such health outcomes as BMI and depression.
Research Questions: What happens to children’s education and health outcomes after fathers leave family? Does it harm more those with higher genetic risk for mental health issues and risky health behaviours? Are children with higher genetic predisposition for education more resilient to the absence of a father?
B3734 - Prediction in the first 1000 days of life of childhood obesity Individual participant analysis of 160000 children - 23/03/2021
B3747 - Neighbourhood conditions and anxiety and depression during lockdown - 29/03/2021
The Covid-19 lockdown has underscored the role that neighbourhoods play in mental health and wellbeing. Neighbourhood characteristics like overcrowding, greenspace, deprivation, and social fragmentation create very different lockdown experiences, even between neighbours living streets apart. This project will investigate the role of neighbourhood conditions in mental health during the covid-19 lockdown. First, we will examine associations of urbanicity, greenspace, deprivation, and social fragmentation with participants’ symptoms of anxiety and depression during and after lockdown. Second, we will control analyses comprehensively for confounds such as poverty using propensity score matching. Third, we will examine the interplay between neighbourhood conditions and individual-level factors including age, housing, household composition and garden access in terms of mental health responses to lockdown.
B3739 - Prevalence of ideal cardiovascular health in preschoolers early determinants and associations with neurodevelopment - 29/03/2021
In the context of the concept of primordial prevention, a score of ideal cardiovascular health has been defined by the American Heart Association (Lloyd Jones et al. 2010). In adults, a higher score as been associated to a Incident Cardiovascular Events, lower Cognitive Decline and Incident Dementia (van Sloten et al. 2018; Samieri et al. 2018). This score relies on the combination of “ideal” values for 7 metrics from cardiometabolic health and behaviours. Ideal values will be defined as recommended values from previous studies and/or from internal thresholds. The list of the 7 metrics entering the score is as follows: Body mass index, physical activity, healthy diet, smoking, blood pressure, fasting plasma glucose, total cholesterol. Two sub-scores can be computed, one from the behavioural components (BMI, physical activity, diet and smoking), and the other from the clinical and biological components (blood pressure, glucose and cholesterol).
B3748 - Data collection measurement and correlates of internalized weight stigma - 29/04/2021
Increasing evidence suggests that social processes including weight-related stigma are key to explaining many consequences of overweight and obesity. For instance, people carrying genetic variants linked to obesity are at higher risk of depression, even where those variants have no known metabolic consequences(1). This strongly implicates social, not just biological, processes by which body weight affects mental health. Among the different facets of stigma is internalized weight stigma (self-attribution of negative obesity-related stereotypes) which may have especially negative consequences. For higher-weight individuals, it is linked to disordered eating(2), maladaptive coping(3), and worse quality of life(4). But it can also affect normal weight and underweight people, and predicts disordered eating and drive for thinness in non-overweight groups(5).
Despite strong theoretical work in this area, our empirical understanding of weight stigma’s causes and consequences is limited. This includes how socioeconomic factors, adiposity development across the lifecourse, and parental body weight influence weight stigma internalization, and the consequences for mental health and social functioning. This is because research has been almost entirely based on small, non-representative samples. In this project, we would measure internalized weight stigma among ALSPAC participants of all weight statuses using a validated questionnaire(6). This would, uniquely, allow investigation of its causes and consequences in a large sample of young people. We would also investigate if a proxy measurement of internalized weight stigma can be constructed from other items, for when purpose-designed items are unavailable. The data and results will support further research in a range of existing data sources.
B3738 - Gestational Age at Birth and Childhood Body Size - 15/03/2021
Preterm birth and overweight constitutes
significant global burdens at individual and structural level underlining an
importance
for identifying modifiable risk factors to inform preventive efforts, e.g. in early-life.
It is well-established that birth weight is associated with later increased risk of
adiposity, and it has been suggested that gestational age is the factor behind this
association. Still, evidence is scarce and social context may affect the association
B3735 - Financial Stress and Smoking Behaviour - 15/03/2021
Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the UK (Cornish et al., 2019) and represents both a risk of serious illness (Prescott, 2019; Bello et al., 2014) and a significant burden on public services and the economy (Ekpu and Brown, 2015). As a result, research which may have potential implications for smoking cessation interventions may be considered justified.
A number of studies have examined the relationship between financial stress and smoking behaviour and identified associations between these variables (Guillaumier et al., 2017; Siahpush, Borland and Scollo, 2013). However, the exact causal nature of this relationship may be considered somewhat obscure.
The proposed research plans to investigate the possibility of financial stress acting as an active predictor/risk factor of smoking behaviour. The longitudinal nature of the ALSPAC data facilitates research examining how changes in financial stress overtime may relate to later smoking behaviour. Although exact cause and effect may not be identified, tracking the relationship between these variables overtime may offer some form of greater insight into how they interact. This insight may be considered enough to make recommendations for further investigation and/or have implications for smoking cessation interventions.
B3736 - Lifecycle The role of maternal eating disorders in childhood wheezing asthma and lung function - 15/03/2021
Maternal mental disorders have been shown to influence foetal development, increase the risk of pregnancy complications, and the risk of several perinatal and childhood outcomes, including wheezing and asthma. To date asthma research has been predominantly focused on the most frequent mental disorders, such as depression and anxiety, showing that these two disorders and broadly-defined maternal stress increase the risk of childhood respiratory diseases, most likely through the activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. The low prevalence of eating disorders, especially during pregnancy, makes challenging single study analyses, and collaborative projects that involve birth cohorts with prospectively collected data represent the best setting for elucidating the association between maternal eating disorders and childhood respiratory outcomes. In this project we will estimate the associations of maternal lifetime eating disorders with childhood preschool and school-age wheezing and asthma, and with childhood/adolescent lung function in several cohorts participating in the EU Child Cohort Network.
B3721 - Perinatal and postnatal risk factors for mental health symptoms in adolescence - 15/03/2021
Perinatal psychiatry is a relatively new, multidisciplinary field of psychiatry. Perinatal usually refers to the period immediately before and after birth, starting at the 20th to 28th week of gestation and ending 1 to 4 weeks after birth; while the postnatal period can be defined as the first 6-8 weeks after birth. Although knowledge is increasing, more research is needed to clarify the associations between parental and offspring mental illness.
The theory behind the potential associations between perinatal and postnatal risk factors and subsequent offspring mental health problems proposes that environmental stress, during pregnancy, such as life event exposure, may affect the neurodevelopment of the foetus and lead to an increased risk of psychopathology.
Among the perinatal and postnatal risk factors that have been investigated in the last years, maternal postnatal depression is one of the most relevant and studied risk factors, and thus most of the existing research is solely focused on this specific risk factor. Further, maternal postnatal depression is known to have an adverse effect on several aspects of child and adolescent development, including social, emotional, and cognitive function, and is associated with offspring depressive symptoms in adolescence and adulthood. Maternal postnatal depression might negatively affect bonding and parenting during infancy, which might affect offspring attachment style and increase the risk of psychotic experiences, among others.
In addition to postnatal depression, there are some other perinatal and postnatal risk factors that could be considered a form of psychological distress and that might reflect chronic maternal stress, which could affect the neurodevelopment of offspring. Among these risk factors, perinatal and postnatal maternal sleeping problems, family adversity, substance abuse, gestational age, or maternal age when birth could also play an important role in the development of subsequent mental health problems in adolescence, such as depressive and psychotic symptoms. However, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study investigating a range of relevant perinatal and postnatal risk factors for subsequent psychopathology in adolescence.
B3729 - Growing up in deprivation or threat A network decision tree approach to the timing of early adversity - 12/03/2021
Early life adversity can have a profound impact on children's cognitive development. But is that association specific or general? We want to test whether adversities group according to their type, and whether the longitudinal impact of different types of adversity are associated with different kinds of negative outcome.
B3728 - Assessing individual susceptibility to changes in sleep during the COVID-19 lockdown - 12/03/2021
Stay-at-home orders during the COVID-19 pandemic have had a major impact on people's usual routines, including their sleeping patterns. Recent studies have demonstrated that relaxed work schedules and more time spent at home have meant that the timing of sleep has become more regular, with less "social jetlag" (the discrepancy in sleep timing between working and non-working days) (1). Nonetheless, there are also been reports in a decline in sleep quality based on self-reported data (2). The factors which influence individual's susceptibility to altered sleep patterns during the pandemic have not been fully investigated. Within the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), parents and young people (YP) were asked to report whether their amount of sleep had decreased, stayed the same, or increased during lockdown. They were also asked to record any difficulty sleeping.
References:
(1) Christine Blume, Marlene H. Schmidt, Christian Cajochen. Effects of the COVID-19 lockdown on human sleep and rest-activity rhythms. Current Biology, 2020; DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.06.021
(2) Kenneth P. Wright, Sabrina K. Linton, Dana Withrow, Leandro Casiraghi, Shannon M. Lanza, Horacio de la Iglesia, Celine Vetter, Christopher M. Depner. Sleep in University Students Prior to and During COVID-19 Stay-at-Home Orders. Current Biology, 2020; DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.06.022
B3737 - The CIVIC project Predicting Covid-19 Impact on Vulnerable Individuals and Communities via Health and Loyalty Card data - 19/03/2021
Diseases such as COVID-19 are not defeated, and there remains an urgent need for improved modelling of disease incidence to support future early-warning systems; improved prevalence estimation; and understanding of long term impacts to vulnerable communities. Finding data to underpin such analyses, however, is extremely difficult indeed. Much COVID incidence goes completely unreported; even the largest studies are limited to tiny fractions of the population, and biased towards specific demographics; and generalized studies have to use either tip-of-the-iceberg medical statistics (ONS, NHS), fine-grained but unsustainable self-reporting technologies (e.g. KCL’s COVID Symptom Study app), or broad brush behavioural data (e.g. Google COVID-19 mobility reports, Social media data). With a lack of widespread adoption of track-and-trace systems in the UK, and (understandably) declining public engagement with self-reporting initiatives, new approaches are urgently required.
A solution is available however. Epidemics such as COVID-19 are now well recognized as being driven as much by behavioural factors as they are from clinical ones - behavioural factors that are richly embedded in the mass, anonymized retail transaction logs held (untapped) in CIVIC's private-sector partners' datasets. Through the interrogation of such data (e.g. health purchases from the UK's leading health retailer), CIVIC will address key epidemiological knowledge gaps in: determining dynamic estimates of untested COVID-19 via fine-grained pharmacy and self-medication datasets; advancing AI/Modelling knowledge by triangulating behavioural features embedded in >1.5 billion loyalty-card logs - that can act as predictors of future outbreak; and advancing the state-of-the-art in identification and mapping of key vulnerable communities across the UK (Olio, Fareshare, ONS).
In such modelling "ground-truth" labelling of target (independent) variables) is crucial. In stage 1 of CIVIC, analysis will occur at aggregated LSOA geographical levels, with data-points labelled with (a) time series of recorded incidence in each LSOA (NHS) and (b) time series of relevant 111-related activity. However in Stage-2, CIVIC will importantly, also investigate the potential of "data-linkage", an approach that holds potential to underpin finer-grained individual level analyses at scale. Such processes must be engrained with privacy-by-design, and underpinned by informed and participatory consent, if they are ever to contribute to public health.
B3731 - Feasibility assessment of RNA sequencing of blood spots - 22/03/2021
We are seeking to test the feasibility of doing RNA sequencing on blood spots as collected in the ALSPAC study. We have done this type of analysis on dry blood spots before but not on blood that was collected in a tube and then put on paper. We want to ensure the samples are viable for our planned analyses.