Background to the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC)

Known locally to Bristol as the ‘Children of the 90s’, ALSPAC has been providing data on the parents and children in its cohort since 1991.

The recruitment of some 14 000 expectant mothers by a team led by Professor Jean Golding at the University of Bristol, located in the former county of Avon, was the start of the project in 1991. From pregnancy to the age of six, data were collected mainly by questionnaire, although a 10 per cent subset - the 'Children in Focus' - had six-monthly hands-on examinations.

Since then, every one or two years from the age of seven, researchers have recorded large numbers of facts about each subject child and their parents. These include a physical examination and the collection of urine and blood samples at different times. There are also detailed questionnaires for the participants about factors such as diet, lifestyle, parent contact and socioeconomic status.

On 4 June 2001, ALSPAC announced its key findings, and a major grant totalling £11 million was awarded to the project by the Wellcome Trust, the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the University of Bristol. This core funding helped to consolidate ALSPAC's DNA bank and cell lines in a purpose-designed laboratory, which opened in 2003. The laboratory was also able to take on DNA banking and cell-line generation for the British 1958 birth cohort, which among other studies provided a control series for the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium.

In late 2005, the Wellcome Trust and the MRC each awarded £4.47 million to ALSPAC, supplemented by £5.3 million from the University of Bristol. This provides a total of £14.2 million core funding over another five years.

In 2006, Professor George Davey Smith took over as the new Scientific Director of ALSPAC and the ASLPAC Teenage Advisory Panel was formed. Representative volunteers from the cohort were recruited to this advisory group to have influence on the policy and actions of the ALSPAC study. They have since been at the forefront of advising on the content, communication and approach for participation projects for the study.

Although it began in 1991, ALSPAC is still in its early days as the study intends to follow its children up to the age of 70, looking at their health and habits as they age, as well as those of their children and effects seen across the generations.