ALSPAC award
5 December 2005
The Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council have each awarded £4.47 million to the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (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 for this unique resource of health and lifestyle data.
ALSPAC (also known as 'Children of the 90s') is a long-term, large-scale population study of 14 000 children, and their parents, born in the Avon area between 1 April 1991 and 31 December 1992.
The mothers and their offspring (now aged between 12 and 14) are given regular questionnaires and interviews about their lifestyle and health. These are supplemented with regular physical examinations of the children, environmental readings taken in the children's homes, collection of biological samples from mothers and children, and data collected from health records.
This huge biological enterprise was established to unravel the genetic and environmental pathways that predispose to the development of common disorders – including food allergies, anxieties and phobias, asthma, autism, cerebral palsy, deafness, depression, dyslexia, eczema, epilepsy, hyperactivity, obesity, and vision disorders. Ultimately, findings will be helpful in the development of preventative drug treatments, and in assessing the impact of diet and lifestyle changes on health and disease.
Many key findings have already emerged from the project – including the observations that putting babies to sleep on their backs reduces the risk of cot death, that applying skin creams containing peanut oil to skin lesions increases the risk of nut and peanut allergy, and that children brought up in very hygienic homes are more likely to develop asthma.
See also
- ALSPAC (More details in Funded activities: Special initiatives)
- Social background may affect bone development (News: April 20 2005)
- Kids of the 90s: Tracking a decade of children's health (Feature)